OMAD is a type of intermittent fasting where you don't eat anything for 23 hours and eat within a 1-hour period. The standard intermittent fasting is not eating for 16 hours and eating within an 8-hour window. The OMAD diet is a bit extreme, but why do it?
OMAD dieters usually fast all day and eat their one meal in the evening at a time of their choosing. Going back to prehistoric times, mankind's daily routine was hunting all day and feasting at night. Nobody ever gathered together in the morning to have a bowl of berries or eat stag meat for breakfast.
Most people who have chosen to do the extreme OMAD diet have already done years of Intermittent Fasting. The reason why they are able to do this is because they have already gotten used to the lifestyle and couldn't really feel much difference between eating twice a day, or once a day. Once you've developed the habit of fasting, you build momentum and the diet becomes easy to maintain. Might as well make it simpler and eat only once.
The 5 Benefits of the OMAD Diet:
1. Simple and Easy
The main benefit of doing OMAD is the simplicity of how to do it. You are preparing for one meal, and eating only that one meal. You can count your calories and macros if you want, but the magic behind OMAD is that our bellies can't really accommodate that much food on a single eating occasion, therefore, making you eat lesser calories naturally.
You can spend your entire day focusing on doing important things without thinking about food - what to cook for breakfast and lunch or where to go for lunch if you're eating at a restaurant. By doing OMAD, you'll spend lesser time on meal preparation and save a little bit of money as well - not that saving money is the main reason why you'll do it in the first place.
2. Better Insulin Sensitivity
What is insulin? Insulin is a peptide hormone that controls blood glucose levels by moving sugar from the blood and into the cells to produce energy for the body. It also stores glucose in the liver as glycogen and converts excess calories to fat. Insulin sensitivity is how quickly our body responds to the effects of insulin. Someone who has good insulin sensitivity will require smaller amounts of insulin to lower blood glucose. Meanwhile, people with poor insulin sensitivity such as diabetic patients, will require a larger amount of insulin to move glucose into the cells and produce energy.
During fasting, there is obviously no intake of any food and no reason for our pancreas to release insulin. Creating this long absence of insulin makes our bodies more sensitive to metabolizing glucose so by the time we start eating, we won't need as much insulin to produce energy, and won't take as much time to do the process. Without the presence of insulin, our bodies go into a fat-burning state which is called ketosis. On the other hand, the presence of insulin makes us go into a fat-storing state.
3. Fasting Causes Fat Loss
Our body needs energy. We mainly get energy from eating food in the form of calories. When we overeat, these extra calories get stored as glycogen and fat. Glycogen is stored-sugar kept in our liver and muscles, while the rest of our calories get converted to fat when our glycogen stores are full.
In a fasted state, however, since we are not relying on calories, our body uses our glycogen supply first, before we start converting our fat into ketones, to be used as energy. The longer you stay in a fasted mode, the more time your body has in emptying those glycogen stores and eventually touching your stubborn fat. An average person can store about 2,000 calories worth of glycogen before their body starts converting fat to ketones as a third fuel source. By doing the OMAD Diet, your body relies on glycogen and ketones for 20 hours so you can get the energy you need for the day.
4. You Have More Energy
When we are in a fasted-state, we are mostly using ketones as an energy source. Unlike carbohydrates, fat is digested slowly because it doesn't need insulin regulation. Fats are the slowest source of energy to metabolize but are the most efficient which is why our body likes it that much and stores more of it. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories, which is twice more than proteins or carbohydrates, which both have 4 calories per gram.
A lot of people who practice intermittent fasting report an increase in energy during their fasting period. This is also because of the absence of the digestive process during fasting. Our digestive system is a very hard-working system that requires high amounts of energy, about 30% of our overall energy, and will even procrastinate on other bodily functions such as healing or repair and the general maintenance of your body in general. When you are in a fasted mode, you will have access to that unused energy to take advantage of, making you feel more active and energetic.
5. Autophagy
Autophagy is our body's natural cellular cleansing process which can only be activated by fasting. According to research, autophagy can prevent major diseases such as cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and infections. Autophagy comes from the Greek for "self-eating". This happens when our own cells consume the damaged parts of themselves resulting in some sort of cleansing effect.
When we do intermittent fasting especially OMAD, our body saves a lot of energy from constantly metabolizing food all day, and instead uses that energy to activate Autophagy. Because most people rarely go into fasting, except when we are asleep, we rarely activate this hidden function in our body. It is believed by a few researchers that this is also a considerable factor in people aging quicker. Constantly activating Autophagy through fasting can give us great benefits in regards to health.
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