5 Signs You’re Eating Too Little For Weight Loss

It may be pretty obvious that if you want to lose weight, you need to reduce the number of calories you deliver to your body every day, which can usually mean eating less. Although it may seem pretty straightforward, it can also get tricky – eating less can quickly escalate to eating too little, which has nothing to do with healthy weight loss.

Each person has their own set amount of calories they need to consume every day to simply live. Calorie intake depends on various factors, including age, activity level, work mode, metabolic rate, and many more.

If you consume more calories than you need or than your body is able to burn, it may result in putting on weight. Now, if you eat less, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you lose weight. In fact, not eating enough calories can have many side effects that are closely linked to your well-being and overall health condition.

We’ve prepared a list of 5 common signs of food deprivation. Read on and find out whether you’re eating too little on your weight loss diet.

Food Is All You Think About

Have you caught yourself thinking about food all the time? Have you been watching so many cooking videos and shows that they made you think you could become the next Master Chef? If so, this can mean that you’re not eating enough.

Eating too little can lead to a persistent preoccupation with food which can manifest in behaviors like those mentioned above. By constantly thinking about food, your organism is trying to tell you that it needs more energy.

You’re Tired and Lethargic

Many people would admit that eating food, especially good food, simply makes them feel better. Therefore, we could quite fairly assume that not eating perhaps works the other way around. We wouldn’t be much mistaken here.

In fact, if you don’t provide your body with enough food, your blood sugar levels tend to drop. As a result, it may cause various issues related to your mental health, including the inability to concentrate, crankiness, or difficulty being patient with others.

Similarly, food deprivation can also make you constantly tired as your body doesn’t have enough energy sources to function properly.

You Can’t Sleep

Our diet has a significant impact on our sleep cycles. Very often, people who are trying to lose weight feel tired and sleepy but are actually unable to fall asleep. This is another common effect of being food deprived, which has been studied on the subject of eating disorders and their impact on sleeping habits.

Your organism needs energy for all your bodily functions and processes to function well – and sleeping is one of the most essential of them. Restoring your diet and maintaining suitable calorie intake may help you get your sleep-wake patterns on the right track.

You’re Constipated

If your body doesn’t get enough calories, it will try to preserve as much energy as possible by slowing down your digestive system. This leads to disturbing your digestive processes which, as a result, may cause constipation.

What’s more, eating enough calories on a healthy diet is usually linked to delivering to your body all the necessary nutrients that are vital for the well-functioning of your organism. One of the crucial nutrients is fiber, which is responsible for maintaining good digestive health. Therefore, depriving your body of valuable fiber can also cause poor digestion and make you constipated.

To make sure your digestive system works properly and therefore allows you to lose weight successfully, you should not only eat more food but eat products that are nutritious. Make sure that you include more fruits and vegetables in your diet, as well as protein, which is the key component of muscle mass.

Your Weight Plateaus or Moves Up

Have you been on a low-calorie diet for a while now, but the number on the scales doesn’t seem to move down? Perhaps it increased? It’s not your scale acting up – it’s because you don’t eat enough.

Even though it may seem like it doesn’t make any sense, you actually need to eat to lose weight. As you already know, not providing your organism with enough energy slows down your metabolism, leading your body into so-called, ‘survival mode.’ Your body simply protects you from starvation by a much slower process of burning the calories it gets. As a result, the scale won’t budge.

On the other hand, eating too little can also lead to increasing your body weight. Restrictive dieting tends to raise levels of cortisol – a stress hormone linked to increased appetite.

How to Eat the Right Number of Calories?

It’s important first to determine how many calories you need to consume every day to maintain your weight. You can consider using the chart in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans that will help you determine your calorie intake based on your individual characteristics.

For healthy weight loss, you should cut about 500 calories from your daily intake, as long as you’re not falling below 1,200 calories a day if you’re a woman or 1,500 calories if you’re a man.

To ensure you still get enough nutrients in your low-calorie diet, you can consult a nutrition expert who will help you devise a proper meal plan and provide reliable support throughout your weight loss journey.

The Bottom Line

Not eating enough food won’t help you achieve the desired effects of weight loss. In fact, it may often cause various problems related to your overall health. Eating enough calories is key to providing your body with the energy it needs to function properly.

If you’re trying to lose weight, then instead of solely focusing on your weight loss diet, you should also consider including some physical activity in your routine. Having a suitable training plan tailored to your needs and preferences will help you burn fat, build muscle and tone your body. Combining physical activity with a healthy diet will make you achieve your weight loss goal faster than you think.