(Another) OMAD question


(Paulene ) #1

I am 8 weeks into my low carb way of life. I have lost 5 kg (starting from 105kg, or 231lb) - not the avalach of fat loss the was fantising about, but 5kg closer to healthy.

I have known for about 15 yrs that I should not eat carbs - basically since I spent 6 months slogging it out at a gym every weekday morning, baffling the staff with my failure to drop a single dress size UNTILL I went Atkins and lost 2 dress sizes in 8 weeks. I got so much flack about my eating, esp. from my Dr., that I quit. I always felt that Atkins done the right way was a healthy way to eat, so I’m releived now that very low carb diets are more mainstream, and that these is so much more info & support available.

One thing that is new to me, and that I am currently doing Mon-Fri, is OMAD. OMAD has just been a natural progression for me, as my appetite and drive to eat is now so low in ketosis. I have never been a keen breakfaster and for years I have just had a meal replacement shake for breaky, so it was no biggie at all to replace with a BPC. I then found myself having to force mysef to eat dinner, which just didnt seem right. It made me feel a bit ill. OMAD just felt right so I’ve now been doing OMAD with about a 3 hr eating window for 5 weeks. I was doing 23:1 but just could not eat a days worth of nutrient in 1hr.

My weight loss has slowed (AKA stoppped) the last 3 weekly weigh-ins, and I’m wondering if it is because I’m doing OMAD. Perhaps I’m killing my metabolism? I recently read Michael Moseleys Fast 800, and it seems that killing metabolism with low calorie is a bit of a furfie based on bad studies. I have read other sites they suggest leaving OMAD for maintenance.
So, I’d be really keen to hear the thoughts and experiences of people on this forum.

And just to clafiy, while the slowdown on the scales is certainly disappointing, I am by no means at risk of derailing. My way of eating now is SO much better now that it was 9 weeks ago that my body has no choice but to shape up. I was a comfirmed snacker adrif in a sea of choc bars, chips, biscuits, etc. I’m still surronded by all these thing, mainly at work, but I now sail right past then without a thought of partaking. They have no hold on me anymore.
PS: I am female, 155cm tall (5:1), 49yrs.


(Full Metal KETO AF) #2

My personal opinion is you jumped into OMAD too soon and often OMAD isn’t the best weight loss plan. Many find it more effective for maintenance. It’s tricky eating a days worth of food in one meal and doing a good job of it. I can pull it off now at 15 months some days but couldn’t do it successfully just months ago. And certainly not 3 weeks into KETO. You’re going through fat adaption now not hard core fat burning. Fasting and maybe under eating if you aren’t hungry for your OMAD will eventually slow your metabolism, fat adaptation and weight loss. I need more info about what you eat. :cowboy_hat_face:


(KCKO, KCFO) #3

OMAD is recommended by Megan Ramos for those at goal weight and maintaining. If you want to lose weight, you should mix it up more. Check out Megan Ramos’s advice in this podcast. All the best on your Journey. Welcome to the forums, too.


(Paulene ) #4

I eat 2-3 low carb meals on Sats & Suns so it’s not OMAD every day. I work away from home mon-fri so OMAD is very convenient. Perhaps I should reintroduce the meal replacement but in the evening this time. Come evenings I usually cant stand the idea of a meal,
but could tolerate a shake or smoothie.


(Full Metal KETO AF) #5

You’re not suggesting an OMAD shake are you? Or do you have your OMAD earlier and can’t do a second meal after work. I recommend eating something over a shake or BPC, especially during fat adaptation. When you have your OMAD are you hungry? Could you tell me what an average weekday is? Example:

6:00am Wake up

6:30am BPC

7:00am Work

1:00pm Lunch OMAD
12oz Fatty Beef / 2oz Cheddar / 8oz Broccoli with 2 Tbls. Butter / Handful of berries

5:00pm Home but not hungry (shake?)

10:00pm Bed

This will help with some suggestions. :cowboy_hat_face:


(Full Metal KETO AF) #6

Also I just reread your initial post and you’re spreading a meal over three hours with breaks isn’t really OMAD. It’s a three hour grazing window. Instead try two meals 4-5 hours apart without snacking in between. Kept your meal times less than a hour to avoid a second insulin response. Avoid BPC for now unless you really need it to get through. Can you just drink it black? The whole purpose of intermittent fasting isn’t depriving yourself from food but keeping insulin low as much of the day as we can. So you’ll be helped by moving to two distinct meals in a more reasonable time frame. :cowboy_hat_face:


(Paulene ) #7

Ah, no. It would basically be TMAD, one full meal (lunch) + low carb shake, maybe with some berries and nuts thrown in, for dinner.

Basic day is: 40 mn walk about 5:30am 3x per week. Coffee with cream + MCT about 8am, 500mls water mid morning, about 11-11:30 some nori and 4-5 Brazil nuts. By lunch at 12 I’m ready to eat but not ravenous. This week it has been 35-40 degrees Celsius here (95-104F) so lunch has been a large bowl of salad (kale, rocket, green salad mix + tomato, cucumbr) with full fat dressing + bacon + chicken + egg + parmesan OR with porterhouse steak or lamb and basil pesto and Jarlsberg. Usually quite full after that. 500mls water mid arvo. About 3ish I might have a coffee with 1 tblspn of cream (but no MCT) accompanied by 4-5 macadamias and 1/2 square of 90% Lindt dark choc. Only water after 4pm. Gym for light strength building and about 30 min on treadmill 3x evenings per week. I have not built up to HIIT yet. Study/read/Netflix. Bed about 9:30. (Occasional late night if assignment due or netflix binge). Sleep like a baby, wake up refreshed. Do it all again.


(Paulene ) #8

Yep, just expanded the eating window last week because I was afraid of not getting all my calories & nutrients in one sttting.


(Full Metal KETO AF) #9

So it looks pretty good. A big salad isn’t so good if it’s going to be just one meal. Porterhouses and lamb are great choices. Try working away from snacks to eating enough at meals to hold you through with two distinct meals. That’s where you can really improve. Especially skip that snack an hour before lunch. Mostly you’re going to find things work with keto till they don’t, and then we need to tweak routines we got into again. I haven’t read the Megan Ramos article that @collaroygal posted but Megan is highly respected and I am familiar with the roulette concept of mixing things up and keeping your body guessing. It works to break a slow to no progress period. And I forgot to say that 5kg is nothing to turn your nose at. That’s 5kg you aren’t carrying constantly every day. Put a 5kg weight in a backpack and feel the difference. You’ll speed up when you’re fat adapted and so eating now is kind of important so you’re body doesn’t start feeling like there’s a food shortage going on and hold on to or try to store more fat for the lean times ahead. Some days eat a lot, some days less, OMAD, TMAD, 3MAD, EF exercise, rest, fast and feast. It keeps your metabolism active and from getting into a complacent groove. :cowboy_hat_face:


(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #10

Hey, Paulene, welcome. Here’s what I noticed about your eating schedule, bit of snacking, possibly not enough food.

8 am coffee with MCT and cream
11-11:30 Nori and brazil nuts
12:00 full lunch
3 coffee with cream, nuts, chocolate

You mentioned you aren’t hungry in the evenings which is great. I wish I would only be hungry for breakfast and lunch! Have you considered two meals a day, breakfast and lunch with a stretch of zero eating in between? Some people stall eating nuts, others don’t but many find they overeat them, carb wise.

You’re also working out which could not only be adding inflammatory water gain (temporary), but muscle gains. Many find that using a tape measure tells them a more honest story about the changes their bodies are making than the scale does. Great job on the positive changes so far!


(Paulene ) #11

I started with 2 meals 5 hrs apart but found I was having to force myself to eat the evening meal.
I havent done breakfasts on weekdays for years other than the shake because eating early makes me feel yuk.

Prior to going low carb I would eat a large meal at night but I now have absolutely no appetite for an evening meal. Forcing myself feels wrong.

I left my tablet on which I usually record food & macros at home this week, so I will start again this week and get a better picture of intake over a 3hr window and see if I am hitting macros.

As much as everyone says ‘listen to you body’, I’m a bit scared mine is giving me a bum steer.
How can you tell if your metabolism is dying anyway?
And what are peoples thoughts on Fast 800? This advocates a low calorie (800/day) low carb diet for 12 weeks before swapping to 5:2, with fasting days of 800cal. Mosely says the idea of low calorie crashing metabolism is not supported by recent research and was based on a bunch of people already with a low % body fat (10%) put on a low protein diet. This does, of course, run contra to conventional wisdom, but if we all took conventional wisdom as truth, none of us would be here on a Keto furum!


(Paulene ) #12

Thanks @David_Stilley, @collaroygal and @PetaMarie. I am very happy that 5kg is gone! 8 weeks isn’t really long enough to see a pattern but I do want to be armed up with options to respond once I see one. Thanks for the advice & suggestions.


(Full Metal KETO AF) #13

Well I don’t approve or believe Mosley’s statement about not crashing your metabolism. If that were true Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and all the other calorie restriction concepts wouldn’t result in way over 90%!of people doing that regain till they weigh more than they started because you can lose weight by starving yourself. When you cut calories that hard your metabolism will slow down in order to keep functioning on the starvation diet. You’ll maybe get used to it even and drop some weight. You’ll stall and cut some more. Eventually when you get to the lowest possible point you’re going to get so hungry you’ll chew your arm off. The drive to eat will be strong and you’ll eat with your metabolism bottomed out. Most of what you eat will be stored as fat again for survival. Instead we eat ketogenic good with plenty of fat energy. You don’t easily store dietary fat like you do carbs because of the low insulin response from fats. Instead your body will use that excess to speed up your metabolism to utilize that energy and function at it’s peak performance level. You may get higher levels of ketosis and waste ketones through breath and urine so excess is wasted and not stored. When your running like a high performance race car and decide not to eat one day your body burns body fat in order to keep your engine revved up. That’s how KETO is different. We’re operating under a different set of rules as fat burners opposed to sugar burners. :cowboy_hat_face:


(Paulene ) #14

And another question: how do you know when you are fat adapted? What are the indicators?
I’m usually in ketosis 1.5-4, sometimes 6ish (based on pee sticks). If I eat carbs on a weekend, I’m back in ketosis within 2 days, 3 at most.


(Paulene ) #15

Ok. Thanks for your perspective. To clarify Moseley does use a low carb and healthy fats approach of which dietary ketosis is a main feature, while Jenny Craig & WW do low fat, high carb which, I agree keeps you constantly hangry. Mosely also incorporates time restricted eating (IF).


(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #16

I like Dr. Berry. He’s easy to listen to.


(Paulene ) #17

Thank you, @PetaMarie - going by those signs, I’ve been fat adapted for a couple of week!

I’ve never made fat bomb before but I think I’ll do some celebratory ‘cooking’ and have me a little party. :tada:


#18

I always try not to write wrong things but I am no expert of course (I can’t even understand as much as many others here, chemistry is beyond me) and I feel this comment is even more just an opinion than usual but here it is.

It’s not OMAD (that’s one meal. A coffee with cream and MCT is a meal as it has a significant amount of calories), 3 hours is probably way too long as well but it isn’t a problem. Do what works for you and try things until you get it right, it’s okay. I had my deliberate OMAD times myself. From my current quite chill viewpoint you try and plan too hard. I don’t care if I eat once or twice a day, I eat until I naturally stop but I probably needed those early experimental OMAD times when I sometimes stopped while I was hungry and ate WAY over simple satiation (rarely but they happened). They caused no problems for me but it’s still not natural. And it’s not good to rack our brains over these things even if it seems inavoidable until we find our way in some cases (I did that a lot because I had no idea but it’s still not ideal at all). A really fine diet doesn’t require that I think. You get hungry, you eat your food until you get satiated. When it doesn’t work for me, it’s always wrong food choices. It is usually very important when and how many times I eat but that happens naturally, forcing it, even to a small extent isn’t good.
As I see, you eat two snacks and one probably small proper meal. It may or may nor work for you, it would be quite bad for me, I need real, satiating food. So I usually eat a late lunch or early dinner and if it happens to be too small for a whole day (I don’t always can eat my daily calories using only proper, satiating food and snacks just can’t satiate me so long and causes other problems, I gets too used to them), I will get hungry and eat later again. TMAD didn’t work and OMAD wasn’t perfect either. So my body decides how many times I eat on any given day (usually once but sometimes twice). It feels much better.

I am very much against low calorie days, even for a day but regularly sounds bad to me but I don’t think that slows down metabolism. Every day low calorie does, our body does its thing when we are starving to mitigate losses… I can’t see why would we want starving using 800 kcals, do some extended fasts if you are good without eating properly, that’s more useful.

OMAD is quite natural for some people and it’s not logical it would harm our metabolism if we eat right. But you eat multiple times a day anyway.

I honestly don’t understand why people consider OMAD best for maintenance. We need to eat even more at maintenance, OMAD is quite impossible for many people then, it’s hard enough for decent fat-loss as not everyone can eat a big enough meal… I really can eat and need bigger meals but OMAD for maintenance sounds impossible using proper meals, I probably could pull it off eating a lot of chocolate after I became full but it sounds plainly wrong.
Of course it’s individual, some people massively overeat on OMAD but it’s unusual.
And even more obviously, there are soooooo many things I don’t know. I just know the story of many OMADers and my own experiences (I always did it fat adapted - I needed it for such a small eating window, I usually do 23:1 - but not always in ketosis. Keto worked a bit better, not surprisingly, many people love them together).


#19

Hi

Congrats on your 5kg down!
I would order “Delay don’t deny” by Gin Stephens. It’s a brief book on IF lifestyles and is her personal story too. It’s an amazing read.
She highlights the importance of the “clean fast”… in your fasting window you should stick to only black coffee and water. Even BPC will spike your insulin so although you think you are fasting all day your eating window us a lot longer than you think. Also, it’s just more fat to burn before you can burn your own body fat. You definitely don’t want to eat 2 meals in a daily eating window. Either do OMAD with a 22/2 for weight loss (longer eating window for maintenance) or do 36-42h fasts and 2 meals on an eating day. This book is not based on keto but is just about taking any eating style you want, and using IF to achieve your goals. There’s a fantastic podcast called Intermittent Fasting Stories that she does which is really helpful to listen to for tips and advice.
Finally I’d say that sometimes your body composition may be changing and your body is healing, so thuu I s can cause plateaus. Remember IF is a lifestyle not a diet, so just hang in there and let your body sort itself out.
Well done!


#20

HI Pauline!!!

You are doing so well and taking the bull by the horns.

but 8 weeks into this big change.

slow it down in that it is best to eat any time your body says it wants food. you will know real hunger vs. ‘head’ hunger by now and you will know that eating your keto food is an ok, good thing, any and all times your body asks for it.

don’t ‘fence yourself in by any means’ doing ‘omad’ or ‘tmad’ cause our lives are not meant to be ‘forced, controlled as we pretend we think it should work’ and all.

eat when hungry. eat as much or as little as you need. Your body will do it for you. Your body will totally self regulate without your intrusion. We just must let that change happen as it needs to happen.

Longer on plan so many go to omad. Cause their hunger is so controlled. Their bodies are more healed. It is all the body asks for at a more further stage on plan.

Just follow your hunger. Don’t try to control anything as we think we need. Let the body tell you when you are hungry and not. Eat as it asks. Thing is longer on plan you know these things your body is asking. We feel it so clear.

You are rocking it out…let it all just happen as nature intended for you to heal, eat, thrive and move forward. You got this!!!