OMAD and snacking

#1

OK, I so “sloppy” keto in that I eat some beans when SWMBO cooks them and the occasional very non-keto treats. But during the whole lockdown I have managed to work my way up from my lowest weight to my original goal weight (10 pound gain) and would like to drift back on down so I thought I’d try OMAD keto for a week. and see if that does it. Going back to strict keto, tracking macros and so forth will do it but I like beans…and tomatoes in larger quantities than cronometer likes them.

Another problem is that I snack a lot. That is why I have the extra 10 really. Not usually terrible stuff but pork rinds with pimiento cheese and an extra bacon and eggs snack here or there.

I can fast once a month no problem but every day is annoying. SO I am grabbing a cup of pork rinds (plain) in the AM and will hit them in 3-4 small snacks throughout the day plus one large keto meal. That;s 18 g protein ad 9 g fat and I’m pretty sure ¼ cup of that doesn’t register much in the insulin department…I guess

So, how much of the advantages of OMAD do you give up if it is really OMAD + a few small zero carb snacks?

PS, snacks make “fasting” more tolerable…

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

I know it’s not fair, but keto is like showering: if you stop doing it, it stops working. If I stop showering I eventually stop being clean. If I stop eating ketogenically, I return to the condition I used to be in. Life can be so frustrating, that way.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #3

What’s the purpose of OMAD? Isn’t it to keep insulin response to as small a time frame as possible? Even a zero carb ‘snack’ stimulates an insulin response - whenever you put something other than water in your mouth it triggers insulin to prepare for incoming. So I’d guess that OMAD and snacking don’t really dance. If you feel the need to snack during the day, maybe OMAD is not the best eating schedule for you.

#4

Well not to belabor a point but showering comes in every variation from pouring a cup of water over your head to a thorough scrubbing with steam and vichy showers and a dozen variations all of which work to varying extents with no perfect answer. Not even clear what the goal of keto is to everyone and surely variations on a theme run the gamut. Borderline ketosis probably not as good as full on but is 0 carbs better than 20? There can hardly be a real optimal ketosis (ok, depends on the objective function).

OMAD with a gram of protein six hours outside the eating window is indistinguishable from OMAD without it. Two? Three? At what point does mainly OMAND with a few tiny snacks become worse than 16:8?

Insulin response isn’t binary. One bite and it is a full on rager as if you had just eaten a doughnut? I don’t think so.

Also I think one can stop eating keto but not go back to pre-keto ways. If i just give up desserts, bread, rice and potatoes I probably am 90% of the way there and might well be in and out of actual ketosis. Eating some legumes and a few more veggies isn’t going to put me back where I was. It took years of doughnuts, pizzas, kolaches, spaghetti and lasagna to build what I had under my shirt.

Maybe this is akin to telling a recovering alcoholic one drink won’t kill them (I don’t espouse that!) – but I think there are more benefits to OMAD than zeroing out insulin response for 20+ hours…

Just my $0.02

#5

It sounds like you’re basically doing pretty well, but OMAD is one meal/day, and OMAD with snacks isn’t OMAD. Is it horrible? probably not, but’s hard to tell exactly what the insulin response is, and my guess is that much of the benefit from OMAD is also related to a full rest for the digestive system and probably other factors that we don’t yet full understand. If you want to have a larger window, then by all means… many folks thrive on 16:8.

However, if you really want to see how you do on OMAD I would look at why you need to snack.

#6

Clearly I need to get a name for this diet, make outrageous claims, get a book and cash in. One big meal a day - and some snacks

O-B-MAD-ASS

Excellent. I can see the moolah rolling in

#7

I have this sometimes. I call this “OMAD with a few bites” :smiley: It’s definitely not OMAD but close enough for me.
But when I do this, I still do IF with a very small eating window, my snacking is just before/after OMAD. or if not, it was one rosehip :smiley: or 3ml cream.
I don’t need snacking (if I want snacks, I eat them during my meal) but these extras are very useful and kind of inevitable sometimes.

What do you want from OMAD? It seems, fat-loss is there somewhere. Your idea may be good for that. I hardly eat too much if I have a big meal and some super tiny that doesn’t make me hungry. I still consider carnivore-ish with possibly more meals easier than OMAD with or without a few bites but we have different times… When I can’t go low enough with my carbs, it’s a good idea to go closer to OMAD at least. Small eating window, one big meal… And if some other eating happens, it’s still better than being more relaxed and having 2 proper meals, that’s a huge amount of food for me unless on carnivore or short afterwards or something… So I see the allure of this idea. It surely suits some of us, sometimes. I never PLAN this style as I need more strictness but a very tiny food never caused problems (a bit bigger is fine if it’s extreme low-carb).

If you just want to use your carbs low, there are other methods for that but if this OMAD + snacks works for you, do that.

#8

So do you want to co author my new fad diet book?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

Sorry! I’m writing one on how to do a bacon fast . . . :grin: :rofl:

(Hint: It involves eating bacon all day . . . )

#10

As it was said, it sounds like your doing pretty well overall and basically should do what works best for you. But as was also mentioned, OMAD does indeed mean One Meal A Day. So whether you eat that meal in 15 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour, it is that one set mealtime that most see the meaning for it.

I personally like doing OMAD quite a lot myself, and find it works well for me. And when I do OMAD, I simply drink mostly Water or the occasional unsweetened Decaf Tea when not eating. (I like to think of it as when you’re not eating, your fasting.) But I also don’t ever snack. (This to me defeats the OMAD meaning itself.) Like I tell my Wife, if you’re going to snack, you should just have a meal and make it a TMAD, if you need to eat anything… Similar to what was mentioned above, anything I want to eat, I just make sure to eat it with my meal, so it’s not considered a snack but part of said meal. To me, anything you eat outside of a mealtime itself, is snacking. Which in the past, before Keto, I thought of snacking of when you ate something like sweets, or chips, or basically junk food. But I see snacking now differently. And I personally find ‘snacking’ one of the big issues for some folks, especially those doing Keto solely or mostly for weight loss. Triggering insulin responses is the one thing they should avoid.

So yeah, some folks do see things differently then others. But hey, when something works, who’s to say it’s wrong? … Like you mention in your initial post - “PS, snacks make “fasting” more tolerable…” Well, that’s because it’s not really fasting for someone who sees fasting as simply not eating. (As I do myself) But if it works for you, that’s all that really matters…

#11

Because that makes sense to YOU.
It’s very different for some of us.
TMAD is 2 meals. OMAD + snacking may be 6 very different sized meals. Or 12. It’s me going out to pick raspberries and eat 2. Or lick some lard just because. Or put cream into my 10 coffees outside of my bigger meal. Or drinking some whisky.
It’s very, very different from having 2 bigger meals. That’s easily overeating for me and eating without real hunger for at least one meal. AND I still miss out my happy fruit picking in the morning when I walk and definitely not need or want any food. But mostly, my coffees. I run out of cream today so it was 1g gelatin and 3g butter outside of my eating window. I so totally didn’t need food, it was out of question. I needed something in my coffee. I will buy the proper brand and stop doing these soon.
And there are licking spoons outside of my proper eating window… My cooking time is pretty much fixed while my mealtimes not so much. So many reason to eat a few kcals only. True OMAD (or even TMAD) would feel horribly restrictive to me sometimes.

But I never would snack to make fasting more tolerable. It’s not fasting and if I don’t enjoy fasting, I eat… I never make decidedly fixed fastings. Whenever I fast, I immediately drop if I feel some real urge to eat, physical, mental, whatever. But not only need for a proper meal is a good reason to eat for me, far from that. That’s why I have tiny snacks sometimes. A proper, moderate sized snack is out. But great for some people…

And the logistics for 2 meals are different than for one even if we have tiny snacks in the latter case. It’s way more simple just to eat everything at once. Except the potential little snacks.

(Allie) #12

When I’m in an OMAD phase and struggle I just change it to a 2MAD day, no drama.

#13

Thanks for the comments. I do think there is a difference between doctrinaire OMAD and OMAD and a few micro- meals (snacks) and 2MAD. As long as they are keto-ish they are all likely to have benefits and I am mixing them up.

Stay safe