Many people find themselves stuck in a weight loss dilemma: they feel like they gain weight whenever they eat, but if they skip meals or eat too little, they’re left feeling weak and low on energy. Dr Neha Shah, obesity and weight loss specialist, co-founder of The Good Weight, explains how to nourish your body without compromising your fitness goals.
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Why does this happen?
According to Dr Neha, when you under-eat — skip breakfast, push lunch to 3, run on chai — your body doesn’t experience that as discipline. It reads it as scarcity. Cortisol climbs, blood sugar dips, and muscle, which costs the body a lot to maintain, starts getting broken down for fuel before fat is even touched. “The weakness isn’t just hunger. It’s your body quietly downgrading itself, bit by bit, meal by skipped meal,” added Dr Neha. Then you finally eat.
Usually it’s a big plate, heavy on carbs, because by then you’re genuinely starving. And here’s where it gets counterproductive — your insulin has to spike hard just to deal with that sudden glucose load, and because your system’s still running on conserve, a chunk of that energy gets parked as fat rather than used. So eating isn’t the villain in this story. The starve, then-binge pattern is.
Why does eating less eventually stop working?
Dr Neha highlighted that, in women who’ve spent years assuming less food is always the safer choice. It isn’t, not past a certain point. Chronic under-eating slows down resting metabolic rate over time. The same 1200 calories that once created a deficit just stop working after a few months. So you cut further and further. That’s not fat loss anymore. That’s your body bracing for a famine that isn’t actually coming.
What should you do?
Most Indian breakfasts lean carb-heavy — poha, idli, upma — while protein gets saved for dinner, if it shows up at all. I’d flip that order. An egg or two, moong dal chilla, some curd or paneer, doesn’t matter exactly what, as long as it’s earlier in the day rather than later. Do this, and the 4 pm crash mostly disappears on its own.
Dr Neha suggested not letting the gap stretch too long. Four hours, roughly, is the ceiling before you eat something again. Not a full meal necessarily — a boiled egg, a glass of buttermilk, a small fistful of nuts. Skip too many of these small check-ins, and you’ll walk into your next real meal too hungry to eat it sensibly. Move, even just a little, against resistance.
Whether your metabolism stays sharp or slows into a crawl over the years comes down largely to how much muscle you’re carrying. Cardio alone doesn’t protect that. Some form of resistance work does — even two short sessions a week move the needle.
Real hunger, the kind that shows up on schedule rather than out of stress or boredom, is information your body’s giving you. Not something to override. The right balance was never eating less or eating more. It’s eating consistently enough that your body stops bracing for the next gap.
About Dr Neha
Dr Neha Shah is a leading bariatric and metabolic surgeon who is the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of The Good Weight.
Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.
