It’s something iv recently got in my head, do intuitive eating for 3 days and have little to no calories for 4 using black tea/coffee as an appetite suppressor, would this work for weight loss if it’s sustainable?
I’d say keep doing OMAD like you are, skipping if you’re not hungry. You should be losing quit well. Sometimes really quick weight loss just can come back quick. Why are you interested in moving to this schedule?
I do exactly this. I fast from Sunday at 8PM to Thursday at 8PM. I have an extremely sedentary job, so I sit for most of this. I weighed 248 on July 7th and weighed in this morning at 206. I drink my electrolytes and a ton of water. I like this method because I think it is more sustainable for me - I just have a “today isn’t an eating day” mentality and I don’t really struggle with hunger (until Thursday afternoon as eating time approaches). When I hit my goal weight I’m probably going to switch to something like OMAD for maintenance.
When you say eat for 3 days what does that mean? Does it mean eating whatever and whenever willy nilly for three days or does it mean eating 2 to 3 meals of nutritious healthy food with absolutely no snacking in between? If it’s “whee! I get to eat whatever I want because fasting is hard and I deserve a break!!” then one problem of eating that way for 3 days and then switching to fasting for 4 will be the difficulty of the fast in those 4 days due to hormonal and blood sugar issues related to that style of eating. It’s basically like a form of binging and restricting and that style of eating is not healthy . It’s like a set up to make it so where you eventually give up fasting altogether because it’s harder than just eating healthy with no snacking on your eating days.
On the fasting side, do you mean 4 straight days of fasting (96 hours) or do you mean 4 days of OMAD or does it mean some other combo of OMAD and NoMAD (no meals a day), etc? Basically it might be helpful to view a fasting day as not just a day of NoMAD only but to also include days where you eat OMAD as well so that you’re giving yourself some space or leeway to eat a healthy meal while still getting a large percentage of the benefit of fasting. I mean obviously NOMAD is better than OMAD but why let perfect be the enemy of the good enough?
Overall I guess I just wanna say, go for sustainability in your fasting . . .fasting for 20 days straight is cool and has benefits but fasting OMAD everyday or even just doing a 18:6 fast every day with no snacking/meals only is way way way more powerful in the long run as it’s sustainable and changes your relationship to food.
/Tedtalk
Really depends on what your goals are. Are you obese? Do you need to lose a significant amount of fat? Is your heart ok?
I do 5 day fasts because I judge the risk of permanent illness/injury because of my weight higher than the risks associated with fasting, but those risks are there.