TLDR: No, skipping meals to achieve fat loss isn’t advisable. Read more to learn why!

TLDR: No, skipping meals to achieve fat loss isn’t advisable. But if you are currently using this approach, I’m guessing it’s because you think that skipping meals will lead to faster rates of fat loss. Although that sounds logical on paper, I actually wouldn’t recommend you take this approach...Here’s why:

It’s really hard to hit protein and fiber goals

A fat loss phase isn’t just about being in a calorie deficit. It also requires you to eat enough protein and fiber so that you can maintain muscle mass and regulate your appetite. The best way to do this is by spreading protein and fiber evenly through out the day. A protein goal of 120g can sound daunting, but if you think about it like 30g 4 times/day that becomes a lot more manageable.

If you’re skipping one (or more) meals, that means the amount of protein and fiber you need to eat at each sitting goes up. And trust me, from experience this makes it damn near impossible to hit those targets.

It can lead to an unhealthy relationship with food

I won’t sugar coat it, fat loss does require some restriction. But that being said, my goal when approaching fat loss is to lose weight while eating as much food as possible. This will help you feel really good for as long as possible during a deficit. When you skip meals, it’s almost a guarantee that you’re going to feel like hot garbage. And that is likely to make you associate fat loss with more extreme restriction, hunger, and feeling like crap.

And when that association happens, food becomes a reward. Not eating is seen as “good” and eating is seen as “bad.” And when we assign these binary labels, it’s a recipe for a disordered relationship with food which will not facilitate success long term.

It can trigger binge eating

A successful fat loss phase is all about managing your hunger. If you don’t eat for a while and get hangry, it’s going to be much harder to make goal aligned food choices and listen to hunger cues. And on top of that, the poor relationship with food that this strategy facilitates can lead to some real scarcity mindset. You didn’t eat at your last meal so now that you’re “allowed” to eat, you’re much more likely to overdo it because you feel like you can’t have those foods the rest of the time.

It’s not sustainable

Skipping meals might be a thing that feels like it will work for you right now... but is it a strategy you can (and want to) maintain for years to come? If you can’t sustain the process that got you the results, you won’t be able to sustain the results!

So even if you see some success with skipping meals, once your fat loss phase is over and you go back to your old eating habits, it’s likely that you’ll regain the weight because you haven’t established the habits that you can keep up with once your fat loss phase is over.

Train With Moxie