I have a question on how the metabolism might react to water fasting vs very low calorie (say, under 500) when you do it over a period of time.
On one hand I’ve heard it said that if you lower your calories too low you will crash your metabolism, or the so-called “starvation mode”. But I’m not quite sure I understand how this works in a real sense, if you’re eating foods that don’t provoke much of an insulin response, and you’re not grazing all day. So let me use as an example that in a fasted state, someone would eat a hardboiled egg and a dill pickle.
Other than the possibility that eating a little might cause hunger, is there a reason this would be *bad* for you? If you had been in a low insulin state, you weren’t starving and “ate” breakfast and lunch from your fat stores, so my impression is that it isn’t really a “starving” day, you’re just probably slowing down fat mobilisation a tiny bit to digest that egg. The egg itself won’t make a big insulin response so my thought is you could keep going on afterwards with your fast without too much of an issue?
And to clarify, I am purely looking at it from the point of metabolism, not autophagy or gut healing. I just wonder why people are so worried on OMAD if their calories aren’t high enough. I would assume your body got plenty of fuel from fat storage during the rest of the day so the idea of eating a whole day’s worth of “calories” in a meal doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, a normal sized meal (under 1000) would be my average on OMAD because I physically would not be able to eat more than that in an hour if i’m prioritizing protein.
The modern concept of ‘diet’? Do yourself a huge favor and forget about it. The more we talk about diet and dieting the fatter the society gets.
Diet is everything you eat. Fasting is when you eat. All you need to do is cut the garbage and eat until you are satisfied. For instance tearing through a giant plate of onion rings? Both not cutting the garbage and eating way past satisfaction.
Drop the empty sugars, drop drinking your calories, drop the heavily processed food, and other than that just eat. There are 21 meals in a week. If you are doing 16/8 you are already cutting 1/3rd of your total calories, so have a normal diet beyond that. If you are doing OMAD you could easily be cutting well over half your normal calories, and that is giving you an allowance to have a larger than usual daily meal.
Don’t count the calories, just pay attention to the quality of what you eat (nutrition-wise) and don’t overdo it.
Answering your question about metabolism. You cannot ruin your metabolism. Your body will not go into starvation mode and leave you only being able to eat a saltine every day and still gain weight. I promise. I take care of people with eating disorders. If starvation mode was a thing, these people would not be skeletal. You will hear about metabolic adaptation- a d yes as you lose you will need less, as your body becomes more fuel efficient, it will require less. Your metabolism however, is safe, fasting will not slow it down.