What are your thoughts on the OMAD diet?

[Anonymous]

Eating one meal a day.

Do you think it is sustainable?

Do you eat one meal a day?

So far in a week, I've lost 10lbs doing it. Granted I know it's mostly water weight, but it feels good to be 10lbs down.

I think I can do this for the rest of my life.

[FreyaRed]

I think 3-4 small meals are better. With one meal daily there is a risk you start eat huge portions which will widen your stomach and you will feel more hungry. Another reason, after 12 hours without glucose in blood, your body switches in energy save mode, this is definitely not good for losing weight.
There is keto diet (Atkins diet) where you have eat just one meal and it needs to contain less than 300 kcal in carbon hydrates (starch, sugar, flour, bread, paste, rice...). However with this diet you have to check you ketone bodies level in urine. After a while your body get accustomed with fat transformation in liver into glucose and ketone bodies which can lead to ketosis and this is life threatening state that needs immediately ambulant treatment. (You feel ill and your breath and urine smells like acetone)
Several small portions daily are definitely better option, but demands probably more self-control.

[Laws-Of-Existence]

You mean keto-acid-osis which only happens in already diabetic people. Ketosis is not dangerous for itself. Metabolically, burning fat causes less damage than glycolysis but still total glucose oxidation causes least aging of all. Yet regardless of your intake, there has to happen catabolism if you want to lose fat one way or another. While you have fat to lose, striving for ketosis is theoretically the most efficient way.

i did "keto" a while back, stuck to one meal 5 days per week, skipping food for two days, sometimes a weekend day of multiple meals to "reboot" the metabolism but ate in total less meals than days lived, for more than a year straight, mostly for the time and costs that it saved (or maybe just a mental cope thing). With no carbs other than what is in celery and dehydrated livers. I had visible veins on my lower abs when i started and i had them when i stopped, but i gained 15kg, although a lot of it was creatine water weight but i never had low energy while at it or anything. It is not dangerous and doesn't make you overflow with cortisol or else strengthening wouldn't be possible with it. Fatty foods reach caloric surplus at very low volumes so your stomach doesn't get stretched at all either.

If you talk to any person who actually tried this thing, they will tell you that what demands the most self-control is eating. When in ketosis, people lose appetite, and when fasted for >20 hours , the stomach has already shrunk. There's an issue of failing eating enough to prevent bone atrophy and stuff (the same issue as with that semaglutide or whatever it is).

[rgb008]

I do daily fasts often. I could do one meal a day probably.

[Levin]

I think people generally eat too much. Too many empty calories, dead foods. Too many meals.

I think people could improve their health significantly by eating less.

Personally, I eat from 11am to 5pm on weekdays. So two main meals and a snack. Suits me well.

On the weekend I eat what I like.

Overall, flexibility is probably best. Sometimes you want more calories. Sometimes you don't want much. Listen to your body. People get into trouble because they become too rigid about food. If I'm hungry in the morning I'll have some toast. I ain't fixed.

[Asker]

Absolutely which is why I am correcting it by eating just one meal a day and not a very large one either. No more than 1200 cals.

[MrChinaski]

If you can spread your caloric intake over the day then it has some health benefits. Particularly protein... fasting causes your body to enter a catabolic state in which it consumes its own muscle to keep basic life functions humming along. That said, if everything else about your lifestyle is healthy and you aren't aiming for elite sporting performance then it probably doesn't matter much.

[NathanDavis]

that might work for some but not for everyone...

personally... it would do a lot of damage for me, lol

eating more (but way smaller meals) works better for me so... case by case scenario

[Lauraita]

I think its effective as you simply can't eat so much in one sitting and its easier to track all nutrients if its at once but I can't do it I love snacking too much

[Nikki1989]

I have been on one meal most days for close to 25 years. I am never hungry.

[jahaims]

I eat one 2000-2500 calorie meal daily. I've been doing that for around 7 years. It depends on your genetics.