You’ve heard of “overeating”, but undereating? Is there such thing? Then you heard a buzz that undereating could actually be a reason you’re tired, sick or have a sluggish metabolism…and now you’re wondering, “Am I eating enough?” In Part 2, on the tails of Part 1’s breakdown of “7 Signs You May Not Be Eating Enough,” here’s what to do about it…
- Struggle to shed body fat or lose those “last few pounds” (always)?
- Can’t seem to put on weight or size—no matter how much it feels like you are eating?
- Always had a sluggish metabolism?
- Never hungry for breakfast?
- Feel like you’re hitting a wall at the gym?
- Wonky hormones or loss of your period?
You may not be eating enough.
Despite all the hype we hear nowadays about the “obesity epidemic” and assume it’s because people must be overeating, chronic undereating is actually more common than we think.
“Undereating? You mean dieting, right?” you ask.
Nope. I am not talking about restricting or eating disorders here.
I am talking about not eating enough for your body’s basic needs and metabolic function—without even realizing it!
Some of the common signs and triggers for undereating include:
- Loss of appetite and hunger
- Easily full when eating
- Tired frequently
- Require naps to keep going throughout the day (or want naps)
- Stomach pains or discomfort when you do eat
- Constipation and bloating
- Not much energy during workouts or higher-demands of activity
- Cold easily
- Low immunity
- Hard stools to pass
- Disconnected with body and how food makes you feel
- Busy or on-the-go lifestyle
- Hate cooking, meal-prepping and grocery shopping
- Ill prepared (when hunger does strike, you don’t have a snack on you or didn’t think about packing a lunch, so you just make due with what you have)
- Nutrient deficiencies
- Loss of period
- Low-libido
- Easily weepy or tearful
- Headaches
- Difficulty concentrating and focusing
- Apathy
While America’s overconsumption of everything from fast food to bacon and grains is frequently “breaking news”, we rarely think about if we are eating enough…
We rarely think about eating enough, that is, until we begin to realize something may not be right with our health or our inability to reach our goals (i.e. struggle with losing weight or putting on weight; our doctor tells us we are ‘anemic’; or bloating and constipation becomes unmanageable).
How do I REALLY know if I am undereating then?!
There is no one straight forward answer.
As every body IS different.
However, if you are a moderately active individual (as in, you are not a couch potato and active in your daily life—carrying your groceries, walking to and from here and there, hitting the gym or walking a few times per week), a baseline of intake from a caloric (energy) perspective is approximately 1800-2,000 calories Even better if and when the foods that make up your diet are nutrient-dense (i.e. fresh fruits and vegetables, protein with every meal, healthy fats, lots of water, little starch, no sugar).
Far from this baseline though, often times a day in the life of a chronic undereater may look something like one of these folks:
Example 1: The Chronic Undereater (Who has no clue they aren’t eating enough)
Breakfast-Nothing at all
Mid-morning-Large cup of coffee. Some type of snack while sitting at their desk or on-the-run (a handful of trail mix, a piece of fruit, ½ a blueberry muffin in the break room, or 1-2 mini-candy bars from the jar at work)
Lunch-A Clif Bar or Juiceland smoothie
Snack– (Kinda hungry) Cheese and crackers
Dinner– Sushi roll, edamame
Or, this:
Example 2: The Chronic Undereater Who Wants to Eat Healthy
Perhaps they are more active and aware they need to fuel themselves throughout the day with healthy eats. The problem is, now that they’ve cut out grains, and sugar, and dairy…they feel sort of at a loss for what exactly to eat.
Breakfast: 2 eggs over easy, 2 strips of bacon
Lunch: Spinach salad with chicken and avocado on top
Dinner: Spaghetti squash with grass-fed beef homemade meatsauce, steamed broccoli
Or one more:
Example 3: The Chronic Undereater Who Thinks They Are Eating Enough
Problem is, this individual is more active than they give themselves credit for. Not only do they workout in the gym most days, they also work an active job (on their feet as a nurse or teacher or mom all day). When they are not working, they like to be busy—always something going on: friends, social functions, volunteering, meet-up groups…life is short! Soak it up! They eat frequently throughout the day…but the frequency doesn’t match up to the total overall energy needs they have.
Breakfast: 3 egg whites, 1 egg, 1 tbsp. nutbutter, ½ cup steel-cut oats
Workout: 45-minutes strength work + conditioning (30 minutes)
Post workout: 1 serving protein powder in water
Lunch– Homemade chicken salad
Snack: Handful of nuts
Dinner– Salmon or chicken, broccoli, sweet potato
In each of these cases, one thing is universal:
Not eating enough to support their body’s needs.
Keep these daily eating habits up, and we struggle.
I hate it when I read articles about how “eat less calories and live longer” or when nutrition blogs talk about hacking our own metabolisms through methods like carb-cycling, intermittent fasting or juice cleansing.
They get us believing that eating less must be more.
Or that surely the problem with our health or our weight or even low, lethargic energy is that we must be eating too much.
While there may be a time and a place for these methods (depending on the individual, not the masses), what many of these nutrition experts and “weight specialists” fail to address is the fact that a vast majority of people are (1.) undernourished, (2.) not digesting their food properly and (3.) stressed (physically and mentally)—all factors that tie into the chronic undereating equation. Check out why:
Chronic Undereating: The Causes
1. Undernourished: In layman’s terms, undernourishment happens when you don’t eat enough for your body’s needs. And I’m not just talking dieting or calories here. I am also talking failure to plan, apathy and NUTRITION:
- Nearly 60% of us eat out at least once per week, and Americans spend more money on eating out than groceries (suggesting, we are not planning or preparing our meals)
- Only 1 in 10 Americans eat their veggies
- 75% of us are chronically dehydrated
- Another 75% are deficient in magnesium—the mineral responsible for governing about 300 different functions (heart beat, muscle contraction, hormone balance, bowel function, energy!).
- Half of people don’t have enough Vitamin D in their system—necessary for absorbing many of your nutrients in the first place
Aside from simply poor planning (not having snacks on hand when hunger strikes, forgetting we should have packed a lunch, etc.), chronic undereating goes far beyond the amount (calories) of food that goes into your mouth.
Are YOU getting all the nutrients you need to actually nourish your body? (Or are you relying on poor sources of energy?)
And, remember this: Why do we eat in the first place? For pleasure, (yes of course), but primarily the point of eating is to supply the body with the necessary vitamins and minerals it needs for optimal function.
“Healthy eating” gets a negative stigma sometimes but all it really means is eating the balance of proteins, carbohydrates, healthy fats and water the body needs to be nourished.
2. Poor Digestion. A second trigger for chronic undereating: if you’re not digesting your food appropriately, then you are not going to absorb the nutrients you ARE eating anyway.
You may be trying to “eat enough”, but if your body is unable to absorb it, you are missing out. Leaky gut, sluggish digestion, a weakened gallbladder or liver, IBS, constipation, bloating, GERD, indigestion, nausea, overfullness, gas, and increased tiredness are some signs that your digestion is not up to par. By addressing your digestion, you are able to better absorb your nutrients, and become more nourished in general. This leads to enhanced metabolism and no more chronic underrating.
3. Stress. When we are stressed our body goes into protection mode: meaning it tries to maintain homeostasis as much as possible (if it was a beauty pageant contestant, it would declare “world peace”). Our metabolic function sllllloooowwwwssss down. Our appetite gets blunted. Digestion goes haywire (trying to deal with the stress). Our body fights to stay put—holding onto weight and body fat as best it can. And chronic undereating ensues—going hand in hand with these symptoms when we: don’t feel hungry, our digestion is off and our metabolism is sluggish. Of course our cues for eating will be off!
So what should I do about it?
If you suspect this article may apply to you, try out my 7-Day quest to determine if you are eating enough…
Am I eating enough?: 7-Day Quest
Step 1: Days 1-3 To get to the bottom of your own eating (and answering the question: Am I eating enough), a good start line would be to keep a food log for at least 3 consecutive days.
In your log, you will record:
- The time you ate
- What you ate/drank
Some people find apps like MyFitness Pal beneficial.
While I am not typically a fan of apps like these (I think they make us focus far toooo much on our macronutrients and calories to a default), for the purposes of seeing if you are eating enough, MyFitnessPal can be a good 3-day baseline to assess.
At the end of three days, reflect…
What did you discover? How much are you really eating?
If it is less than that 1800-2000 calorie baseline (as a minimum), chances are you may be undernourishing yourself.
However…numbers may not tell us everything.
Step 2: Days 4-7.
For the next four days, you are going to continue to log your food, but this time, the focus is going to be on how you feel.
Numbers aside, this next step is called a mindfulness log.
You can delete MyFitness Pal now. We aren’t so worried about numbers here. Now we are concerned with how you feel and getting re-connected with your body.
Whip out a good ol’ notepad, pen and paper or Evernote/Google Doc, and this time you will record:
- The time you ate
- What you ate/drank
- Your hunger/fullness rating on a scale of 1-10 (before and after your meals)
- How you felt (physically, mentally, emotionally) around your meals and any symptoms you experienced (dip in energy, bloating, gas, etc.)
Try your best to take this seriously. It’s just 4 days. At the end of 4 days, it’s time to reassess again.
- What patterns did you notice?
- What were your hunger/fullness cues like?
- What symptoms do you experience around your meals?
I will stress that often times, when we are undereating, we don’t feel hungry; or we don’t realize we’ve been lacking in energy…until we stop to think about it.
Chronic undereating forces our body to learn to deal with what it’s got—and to survive off whatever you will feed it, whenever you will feed it.
And often times, we find, that when we actually start eating more again—or regularly/more frequently…we begin to feel more hungry…or get a rush of energy (that we have no idea what to do with!).
Days 8+
Let the mindful eating begin!
Mindful eating is the act of eating based upon an awareness and knowledge of both what our body needs (for fuel and nourishment), as well as the occasional purposes of food as a social or relational connector.
Mindful eating is the type of eating you do when…
- You make sure you eat something for breakfast (even if you are not really hungry)…
- Or you eat a little something at a friend’s dinner party—as a gesture of thanks and kindness—even though you hadn’t planned on going to the party initially and have fueled your body throughout the day.
- Or you eat lunch a little earlier than you typically would because you have a meeting a 1 p.m.
Mindful eating is all about mindfully nourishing your body.
When you’ve been a chronic undereater—it can be super easy to check out of mindful eating, based upon a busy schedule, lack of hunger, poor pre-planning or apathy about food.
However, when you mindfully start eating again (and your body starts thanking you for finally nourishing it again fully), mindful eating transforms more into intuitive eating (you are truly able to fuel your body again based on your hunger-fullness cues, and eating what sounds good to your body).
You become more connected.
(Not to mention: More energetic, more balanced—emotionally, see more gains in the gym, hack your weight loss or weight gain, boost your metabolism, and beyond).
Unsure if you are eating enough?
Want help in making a food plan that works for you?
Connect with me today for a free initial 30-minute consult or shoot me an e-mail at Lauryn@thrivewithlauryn.com and let’s get your appetite back!
