Which meal should I skip to lose weight? A complete guide

Meal skipping is the intentional skipping of one or more main meals during the day. It’s a popular dietary approach used to optimize the number of calories you consume and thus lose weight.

If you’re considering this weight loss method, chances are that you’re asking yourself: Which meal should I skip to lose weight? Unfortunately, there is no single answer to this question. It’s important to find a personalized approach and align your eating patterns to your needs. Yet, it’s also important to understand that meal skipping can have plenty of downsides, including:

• Slower metabolism
• Overeating or bingeing
• Altered food choice
• Energy crashes
• Blood sugar fluctuations
• Nutrient and hormonal imbalances, etc.

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A huge number of people, and women, in particular, are dealing with poor body image and strive to lose weight. It’s also no secret that dropping even a few extra pounds can turn into a real challenge. No wonder so many people are hoping to find a shortcut to their dream body. And that’s when approaches like meal skipping sound like an optimal solution.

Which meal should I skip to lose weight? In this article, we’ll delve into the specs of meal skipping, explore the possible benefits, and talk about the downsides of this method. Let’s dive in!

What Is Meal Skipping?

Meal skipping is the term used for the intentional skipping of one or more main meals during the day. It can mean going through your days without breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and it’s a rather common weight loss approach that many see as a quick fix.

How Does Meal Skipping Work for Weight Loss?

The idea behind meal skipping for weight loss is very simple. The weight loss mechanism consists of three stages:

1. You consume food to provide your body with the nutrients and calories it needs to function properly.
2. Your metabolism converts the food into energy and uses it to support the work of your body, brain, and all internal organs.
3. When you consume fewer calories with food than your body spends, it starts taking the missing calories from fat stores, and that’s how you drop pounds.

When you skip one (or a few) of your main meals, this potentially decreases your daily calorie intake. Respectively, you consume fewer calories than you spend and lose weight.

Meal Skipping vs. Intermittent Fasting

When considering meal skipping as a possible option for weight loss purposes, many people unintentionally confuse it with another dieting approach – intermittent fasting. However, in reality, they are not the same.

Intermittent fasting (IF) is a dietary approach that implies following successive cycles of fasting and eating over a prolonged time. This eating pattern comes in many different forms. The most popular options include 16/8, 18/6, and 20/4 intermittent fasting. The first number in each method stands for the number of hours during which you fast (don’t consume any calories), and the second one stands for the number of hours during which you can eat. Respectively, if you choose an 18/6 method, you need to stick to an 18-hour fasting window and only consume food during the remaining 6 hours. The goal of this approach is to initiate the so-called “metabolic switching,” a state in which your body exhausts its sugar stores after hours of fasting and starts burning fat for energy.

Now that you know what IF is, it’s clear that it also implies skipping one or a few typical meals. Then, what’s the difference between it and meal skipping? Intermittent fasting means successively fasting for a fixed number of hours and within a similar time frame every day. Depending on how you plan your fasting and eating windows, it can imply missing one or a few full meals. But not necessarily. And meal skipping is only about skipping meals. Generally speaking, IF is a more disciplined approach.

Which Meal Should I Skip to Lose Weight?

When you decide to hop on your meal skipping journey, chances are that you want to get the best result possible. And, given this, it’s absolutely natural to ask yourself: which meal should I skip to lose weight?

Before we delve into the details, we have to state that there is no one “best meal” you should skip to stimulate weight loss. In fact, finding the right approach requires a personalized take. It’s important that you consider your energy needs, schedule, and any other things that might affect this path.

In order to help you make a weighted choice, let’s consider all three traditional meals with reasons to skip or keep them in your schedule:

Breakfast

Breakfast is the first meal of the day. It’s also often referred to as the most important one. Yet, when it comes to meal skipping, it’s a common choice. Why? Because skipping breakfast is often quite easy. Besides, when you go without breakfast, it extends your window without food, which can also let you tap into the benefits of intermittent fasting.

But is breakfast important, and should you really skip it? Although there is a belief that breakfast is just over-marketed, science provides sufficient evidence of its importance. A big number of large prospective studies reveal the link between breakfast consumption and the following health outcomes:

• Lower risk of obesity and weight gain.
• Improved glucose metabolism and lower risk of type-2 diabetes.
• Improved glycemic control. 
• Lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Given these positive effects of breakfast on your health, we could say that skipping this particular meal might not be the best for your overall well-being.

Lunch

Lunch falls at your midday break. It’s the meal that refuels your body and brain after half a day of work and brings a number of benefits. Yet, it’s also one of the most common meals people skip both intentionally (to lose weight) and unintentionally (for example, due to a busy schedule). So it’s another option that you have.

Skipping lunch may also be rather simple, especially if you’ve had a nutritious breakfast in the morning. It’s also technically possible to adhere to intermittent fasting skipping lunch, and thus gain the associated benefits. However, there are also quite a few reasons to keep lunch in your daily schedule:

• Eating lunch helps stabilize mood and support mental health.
• It optimizes blood sugar levels.
• It helps avoid midday energy crashes.
• It stimulates focus.
• It supports your metabolic function.
• Lunch is often an important part of one’s social life.

Dinner

Finally, the last meal of the day, dinner, can also be potentially skipped. Many people choose this option to stimulate weight loss and go to bed with a lighter feeling. And it can also support fasting. 

Skipping dinner might be the hardest option. This is due to two reasons: 1) you’re typically exhausted after a long day, and having a nice dinner feels comforting, and 2) dinner is often considered a “social” meal that people frequently share with their loved ones, which means that skipping it can feel like being left out. Besides, eating dinner regularly has a range of health benefits. And if it’s a family dinner, it also helps strengthen the bond with people you love.

So, which meal should I skip to lose weight? As you can see, every major meal in your day has a range of health and other benefits. With this in mind, experts often recommend avoiding skipping meals in general. Still, if you decide to give it a try, there is no correct answer on which meal is best to skip. You need to decide on this yourself based on your specific needs, schedule, and conditions.

The Potential Downsides of Skipping Meals

Skipping meals can sound like an easy way to cut down the calories you consume every day and thus lose weight. And this approach can really work. However, before you test it out, it’s also important to know about the possible downsides of this method:

• Slower metabolism. When your body doesn’t receive as much energy as it needs, it slows down its metabolic function. This means that the body burns fewer calories and stores more fat. Naturally, this slows down the weight loss process. And in the long run, slower metabolism also means that you’ll need to consume even fewer calories to support weight loss. Needless to say, this approach is unhealthy. 
• Overeating or bingeing. Even when it feels like skipping a meal is easy for you, when you do so, your body is not receiving the calories it needs. This can lead you to overeating or bingeing later. Studies show that people who skipped breakfast consumed 193 more kJ at lunch, and those who skipped both breakfast and lunch consumed 783 more kJ at dinner.

• Altered food choice. Apart from urging you to eat more than you usually do, skipping meals can also change the food choices you make. When you miss one of the essential meals, this can make you feel extremely hungry. In this state, people tend to eat just anything they can get their hands on, which makes it harder to stick to proper nutrition.

Additionally, skipping meals can cause energy crashes, blood sugar fluctuations, nutrient and hormonal imbalances, and overall poor well-being.

FAQ

Can skipping meals help me lose weight?

In short, yes. Skipping one of your daily meals can potentially lead to consuming fewer calories per day and, consequently, weight loss. However, many experts emphasize that such an approach typically leads to short-term results that might be hard to sustain.

Is it safe and healthy to skip meals for weight loss purposes?

Skipping meals can work. However, it also comes with some risks and downsides. It’s important to understand several things. Firstly, meal skipping isn’t right for everyone. When it comes to weight loss, everyone needs to find an approach that aligns with their schedule, body/energy needs, and other special needs. Besides, you need to remember that skipping meals can also lead to a slower metabolism and overeating. 

Which meal is the best to skip to lose weight?

There’s no single “right” answer to this question. Meal skipping can offer positive weight loss results if done thoughtfully and carefully. To make the most out of it, it’s important to adapt your approach to your specific schedule and body. Listen to your body to see which meals might feel easier and more natural for you to skip. And pay special attention to your hunger patterns. You want to align meal skipping to your body’s natural hunger clock to avoid overeating during other meals or feeling unwell.

Conclusion

So, which meal should I skip to lose weight? As you now know, skipping meals can indeed help manage your daily calorie intake and thus stimulate weight loss. However, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to which meal is best to skip.

Furthermore, now you know that skipping any meal can eventually push your body into survival mode and lead to a number of downsides. Thus, it’s recommended to avoid this weight loss method and focus on proper nutrition and physical activity instead.

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