From time to time, Dr. David Baron, executive director at the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, will ask other health experts at the Ashe Center to host the column to answer student questions.

By Carol Chen

Skipping meals ““ should you do it?

Only if you have a good reason. Otherwise, there are some important reasons why you shouldn’t. Besides the embarrassment of your stomach growling in class or hunger that will keep you from functioning at your best, here are the top reasons not to skip meals:

Reason # 1 ““ Skipping meals for weight management can backfire

Your metabolism has gone through millions of years of evolution to know when to increase or slow down to the best rate for survival. Don’t bother trying to beat the system. You won’t and you can’t win. That’s why so many people who go on restrictive diets fail.

When you ignore your hunger cues and skip meals, your brain sends out a complex network of signals to entice you to eat high-calorie foods, such as ice cream or chocolate cake, when they come into sight. This is to help you prepare for the anticipated deprivation associated with dieting. It’s not just about willpower anymore. It’s simply a survival instinct.

The more you put yourself through these kind of self-induced famines, the more the cycle intensifies and perpetuates. So people who try to lose weight by not eating may have some modest success initially, but often wind up gaining back even more weight in the long run.

If you are trying to lose weight by staring down hunger using self-discipline, I suggest you save yourself a few pounds of additional stress by not subjecting yourself to such kinds of futile torture.

Reason #2 ““ Skipping out on calories can sabotage your cognitive performance

A study published in the behavioral nutrition journal Appetite showed a significant difference in cognitive performance in male college students after consuming a late afternoon calorie-rich snack (fruit-flavored yogurt) versus a low-calorie snack (lemon-lime flavored diet soda without caffeine).

Researchers at Tufts University asked the subjects to carry out cognitive tasks such as digit span recall. Turns out those who consumed the higher calorie snacks were able to recall “significantly more digits in the backward digit span test and respond significantly faster in the attention task.”

If you are looking for an extra boost in academic performance, then forgoing your next meal is a poor strategy for success.

Other health problems associated with skipping meals include irregular menstrual cycles in female college students, self-perception of poor general health, tendency to suffer from constipation and more. To have a healthy body that performs at optimal levels, you need to give it the right fuel at the right time. Most college populations generally function best by eating two to three meals a day and maybe some snacks in between. If you have nutrition questions, you can send them to me through the Ashe Center website, www.studenthealth.ucla.edu.

P.S. You could have been having a healthy snack while you were reading this article.

Carol Chen is a dietitian at the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center.

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