What Are the Negative Effects of Eating One Meal a Day?

With your packed schedule and desire to drop a few pounds, eating one meal a day seems like an easy way to go. While intermittent fasting, going long periods of time without eating, has become a popular way to lose weight, like most other diet trends, it's a fad that won't lead to lasting results. In addition to the havoc it plays on hunger, both physical and emotional, eating once a day may impact your health and lower your metabolism. If you're struggling with your weight and finding time to eat is an issue, consult with a dietitian to design a plan that fits your diet needs and lifestyle.

Hunger: Enemy Number One

One of the major downfalls to most diet plans is that they make you hungry, and as it turns out, following a diet where you only eat once a day is no different. A 2007 study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition investigated the effects of eating one meal a day on health parameters in a group of healthy adults. The researchers found that one of the biggest complaints among participants was hunger. This one little complaint, may make the one-meal-a-day diet very difficult to stick to.

Eating one meal a day not only affects your physical hunger, but your emotional hunger as well. You know, when you're so hungry you snap at your husband when he asks you what time you're going to be home from work. This type of hunger is affectionately known as being hangry. Unfortunately, feeling hangry may tap into raw, uncomfortable emotions, which for some may lead to poor food choices and overeating to console those feelings.

Impact on Health

Limiting your meals to once a day may not have a positive effect on your health, even if you lose weight. While the participants eating only one meal a day in the 2007 study from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition lost weight and fat mass, their blood pressure and cholesterol levels went up. And a 2008 study published in the journal Metabolism found that eating once a day increased fasting blood sugar and insulin levels. This study also noted an increase in ghrelin levels, the hunger hormone, in those eating only once a day.

Risk a Slower Metabolism

While you certainly could eat all the calories you need in one meal, limiting yourself to eating only once a day makes it harder. If you eat too few calories, less than 1,000-calories a day, your body goes into preservation mode, which causes a metabolic slow down, which means you burn fewer calories. Additionally, eating more often, three meals a day, may help you burn more fat, according to a 2008 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition.