quick guide on OMAD

Let’s take a quick look at OMAD (one meal a day) today.

So what is OMAD?

It’s exactly as it sounds, it’s having one meal a day.

What are the advantages of it?

Basically you get to eat quite freely with one meal a day in terms of food choice since it’s a whole day’s worth of calories you’re fitting into one mere meal. Say if 1500kcal was your daily goal, that’s like eating 3 big macs in 1 sitting. It’s a lot of food. Chances of you overeating a day’s worth of calories in on meal is quite low.

Disadvantages?

There’s a few.

One, you could be dealing with extreme cravings, hunger and or fatigue cos you’re going through longs periods with zero food.

Two, while it might feel fun to be able to eat whatever you want on OMAD and still be on track, but it starts to become super challenging when you combine it with eating for health (majority whole foods/lean protein). It’s just ungodly amounts of food at one go.

Is it a viable long term weight loss strategy?

Personally, I’d have to say no.

It’s a fine strategy to control the amounts of food you’re eating in the short term say using OMAD as a “cheat day” as you get to eat whatever you want and be somewhat on track. But when it comes to health doing OMAD on a day to day becomes quite impossible to fit in all the whole foods and protein you need all in one meal. Like physically impossible. It’s just way too much volume of food. Going back to the big macs example, 3 big macs is roughly 1500kcal and even that’s kinda a lot of food for one sitting. Can you imagine eating 1500kcal veggies, fruits, proteins, grains all in one sitting?

Well you don’t really have to imagine, I tried it and let me tell you, I failed miserably. I think I ate up to around 1400kcal in one sitting and was just in a massive food coma along with fighting the urge to puke.

Having said that I think it’s still worth it to give OMAD a try if you’ve never tried it before. Try it for a week or two and see how you feel from there. It’s quite possible to use OMAD as a base and make adjustments to it to make it into something more realistic on a day to day basis. Say on the 1500kcal example, instead of trying to eat 1500kcal all in one meal, how about splitting it into 2 meals of 300kcal and 1200kcal? You still get the benefits of enjoying a lot of food in one meal, but you also get the opportunity to eat more whole foods and lean proteins without bursting.

This letter isn’t to convince you to do OMAD, it’s really just to break it down and show you the pieces. If you have no interest in it, there’s no need to try it. There’s plenty of other weight loss methods out there.

Personally I like to use it as a “cheat day” cos it’s just a convenient way to keep my diet in check while also being able to have fun wholeheartedly.

Hope this helps!

Till the next one~

—Po.