In another subreddit someone asked how to lose weight and I replied to do OMAD, but someone replied OMAD is dumb. This lead me to explore OMAD benefits and came up with the following, most apply also to Intermittent Fasting. Do you recognise them? Did I miss any?
Here the original comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/workout/comments/wspq4r/comment/il07ez5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
“OMAD instead is very special, because of the psychology associated that makes it sustainable long term. It makes it low effort, I don’t have to count calories or eat special things you don’t how to cook, it makes it rewarding, I can eat moderately what I want without including the foods I love and don’t want to give up, it makes it easy, once the stomach it’s full I’m done for the day this helps be in caloric deficit (every time we eat we become more hungry), it makes it cheap, I don’t have to buy special foods.
All other diets require more effort and sacrifice so even if they work on paper most people leave them before or after reached their results, because they don’t consider human behaviour.”
IF/OMAD boosts HGH, which helps burn fat and maintain lean muscle tissue. It reduces inflammation, allowing the body faster recovery after workouts. It boosts BDNF (which aerobic exercise is shown to do also) that causes growth of the brain muscle. It improves nutritional absorption, which decreases the caloric requirement. It also improves blood circulation to deliver oxygen and other nutrients to our muscles when it’s needed during/after exercise.
There’s a lot of scientific reasons but I think an easy way for people to get into it is the idea that it’ll help shrink your stomach without changing what you eat. Hunger is the biggest challenge people face, that and eating new foods. If you go on OMAD even for a dedicated period of time that will end, it’ll help kickstart your next diet plan because you’ll feel full faster. Many people get surgery to get this to happen, but this is a more natural way of doing it if you can keep up with it.
Tldr; after a while you’ll eat less and be less hungry.
That guy is thinking too highly of himself. Ive been doing powerlifting and omad for the last 4 years at an almost proffesional level.
He says he trains 6-7 times a week and looking at his posts, he seems to be training olyimpic weighifting or also powerlifting. I would love to see his program, if he takes his training even a tiny bit seriously, there isnt a 1% he is physically able to train 6-7 times a week
The aspects of OMAD that I’ve personally and of course totally subjectively found to benefit me the most and which are to a great extent also why I’m reluctant to part ways with it now that I’m in maintenance, are a direct consequence of the eating scheme’s minimalism: Limited daily food choices, ease of enforcement / adherence, ease of tracking.
Limited screw-up opportunities: My usual home-cooked lunch consists of 3-4 food items, rarely more. There are a whole lot of greens (e.g. traditional salad, steamed veggies), at least a full plate; a couple of generous (think in terms of US portions) servings of a main dish; a variety of fruits; and maybe something smaller on the side (e.g. couple of eggs, handful of nuts, some dairy) to sneak in extra calories if need be. The fewer the choices, the saner they tend to be. When they aren’t, there’s direct feedback (e.g. hunger, poor energy levels, bloating) to try harder on the following day.
Trivial compliance: I get hungry around the time of my established eating window, therefore eating at any other time doesn’t naturally occur to me. Should however, every now and again, my own schedule or others’ dictate a deviation from the norm, then that’s perfectly acceptable too; breakfast, brunch, dinner or 2am street food all remain possible – there’s hardly ever a day on which I genuinely struggle to tailor OMAD to life’s temporal constraints, my own or of those around me.
Effortless tracking: As stated in another recent comment by an author who escapes me, “OMAD is easily quantifiable”. I couldn’t agree more. Whether I’ve had my ideal lunch at home or a multi-course restaurant dinner, over any 24-hour period I generally remain capable of reciting everything that has entered my mouth from memory. This by extension facilitates the monitoring of not only calories but also nutrients and furthermore over longer time frames – when any major food group has been missing from my table for longer than a week or two, I can usually register its absence without even querying my food journal.