By Elyssa Phan, Staff Writer & Photographer
Woke up late? Skip breakfast. Didn’t finish homework from last night? Skip lunch. Too much projects and assignments to catch up on? Skip dinner. Skipping meals seems to be the easy solution to problems for high school students. After all, it’s just one meal, we reason. And we can lose some weight while we’re at it, right?
Well, we may need to start looking for a better solution. Although skipping meals seems to be your savior, it is actually your worst enemy in disguise.
Contrary to most students’ belief that skipping a meal or two can help shed a couple pounds, “skipping meals can [actually] cause your metabolism to slow down, which can cause weight gain or make it harder to lose weight” (Piedmont Healthcare). This is because your body will try to make up for all that lost food earlier in the day by making you crave more food. By the time you get your hands on some calories, you’ll just eat even more than you normally do.
Running from class to class, coming up with a solution for y=35x+12, track practice in the afternoon. This all requires energy – and a whole lot more of it than we realize.
“‘Sugar is the fuel your body runs on, and if it’s not circulating in the right amounts, every organ in your body is affected,’ says Maggie Moon, R.D., a nutritionist based in Los Angeles” (Crain, Women’s Health).
Skipping meals will deprive you of the essential nutrients you need everyday to function. Not only will it affect your physical health, but eventually also your mental and emotional health. Like all the organs, your brain also requires glucose just to be able to think. Skipping meals will make you frequently lose your concentration and you won’t be able to think as well as you can when you get the sufficient amount of nutrients.
Some other common side effects of skipping meals that are often looked over are feeling lightheaded and extra cranky (they call it hangry for a reason). Even though these side effects can be brushed off easily, they can result in a great lack of productivity and patience. For more insight on how some FVHS students feel when they skip a meal, click here.
