OMAD falling off track

(Sandra) #1

Hi everyone!

I have been doing 16:8 for about one month now. I did my first 24 hour fast yesterday!

I had dinner the night before at 8 and didn’t eat again until 8pm last night. I had chicken wings, mixed salad, some cheese and salami for dinner. I had some cravings and thoughts of eating during the day however I just had green tea, coffee and water through out the day. I didn’t feel intense hunger or anything. I was really energetic at my usual bed time though so slept slightly later than normal and woke up early today. But I didn’t feel too tired when I woke up.

I was going to do another OMAD day however by lunchtime today I just felt super hungry. I didn’t prepare anything to eat so ended up doing the total opposite of what I should’ve done which is to push through or eat something keto friendly. I was near a food court and ended up getting some noodles.
Now feeling super bloated and defeated…

Could it be just psychological that I felt more hungry today? Or my dinner last night didn’t have enough fat to sustain me? I was really stuffed after dinner last night though and the total calories came to only around 800.

Will keeping trying OMAD and hopefully habits can be changed!

(Alex) #2

try eating more fat and/or protein on the next OMAD you do and see if you’re still experiencing similar hunger cravings later that day / the next day before your meal. it can be as easy as adding extra butter to your eggs, or a tbsp of olive oil to your salad, without actually noticing that you’re upping your calories due to the fact that it mixes right in with what you’ve already prepared, and won’t visibly show up on your plate. if you feel you’re unable to consume more than roughly 800 cals in one meal due to the initial feeling of fullness afterwards, maybe consider giving yourself a 4 or 6 hour eating window instead for a week or so before jumping right into OMAD, so that you can see how much food you really need to eat to be able to go until the next day without feeling hungry. if you eat at 1pm until you’re full, maybe keep your eating window open until 5 or 6pm that day for your next few attempts, just in case. that way, if you start feeling hungry again around 3 or 4, you can eat again and will know that you maybe didn’t have enough initially. keep tweaking it until you find what food amount / timing ratio suits you best. this will also still provide you with a nice window of being fasted until your next meal, whether that’s 18 hours or 24, which will prove beneficial. keep it simple, and don’t worry too much about the calories. for what it’s worth, i’ve been doing omad for roughly two months now. for reference, i’m a pretty active 25 y/o male. some days, i eat 1800ish calories, others i eat 2500+, and the weight keeps coming off regardless provided i’m eating the right things, despite whether i’m running a marathon or lying on my couch being a potato that day. i never really worry about overeating, and opposite that, always make sure that i’m eating enough. eating once a day and having a daily 23 hour fasted window is a powerful tool to have in your back pocket once you get it down, especially if your goal is to lose weight. just keep your carbs low, eat enough fat, and never be afraid of it. you should not feel hungry on this diet. eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full. if you experience genuine hunger outside of your normal eating window, you should eat. there’s always tomorrow to readjust what you think may have gone wrong today. best of luck :sunglasses:

(Alex) #3

also, congrats on completing your first fast ever! stay well hydrated and consume roughly 5000mgs of salt daily when fasting for a day or more. potassium and magnesium supplementation would also be good if you ever decide to look into extended fasting.

(Sandra) #4

Thank you so much Alex, I will monitor what I eat and how I feel the next day. I think I will start eating earlier and increase the eating window so I can eat slowly in that time. I definitely didn’t feel good after a massive dinner!

(Janelle) #5

This was a really nice, helpful reply!

#6

Did you start out and get fat adapted withOUT the fasting? I’ve found when people start fasting before a real good fat adaptation they feel it huge when they try to fast.

(Sandra) #7

I’ve been doing keto for about two months and measuring ketones. But I find lately I’ve been getting off track quite easily. So don’t think I’m fat adapted.
Any tips on not swaying out of keto or omad? :persevere:

(Natasha) #8

Just my personal experience, but I find it quite hard to do consecutive OMAD days. I basically always eat 16:8, across 2 meals, that’s just ended up being my new normal. I can do OMAD without too much difficulty but definitely need to have a 2 meal day in between otherwise I start getting hungry and craving again.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #9

Eat a little salt on your fasting days. It helps some. I tend to do IF 18/6, OMAD and then 18/6 or 3 meals and then back to 18/6 or OMAD.

I have sardines and canned salmon at my desk in case I can’t make the day as OMAD. I also have almond, pecan, walnut nuts. But I don’t eat many nuts anymore because of the carbs.

I eat beef mostly on omad days with a veggy and sour cream. I have pork rinds, macadamia nuts and cheese to snack post meal (immediately after eating) till I have satiety. I usually need just a little more. Tonight is steak for OMAD. Sometimes I snack while cooking to get more calories in.

(Sandra) #10

Thank you everyone for being so helpful!
I think that’s a good idea to switch between 16:8 and OMAD. I will check on the OMAD day to see if eating 16:8 or 2 meals the day before makes it easier to OMAD.

After the noodles yesterday my stomach was not happy :dizzy_face:

I have macadamia nuts and tuna cans also at work which I have during the 16:8 when I need a snack.
Today back to 16:8 for the next few days. Will attemp OMAD again next Monday.

By the way, It’s really awesome to have this community of people :grin:

(Bunny) #11

When-ever in an emergency situation (survival skills) like that I would just find something that comes with a big hunk of fatty meat and if possible with some fat like bacon (toss the bun or tortilla). That way you burn with glucagon rather than insulin. My favorite thing to do is to get a couple slices of pizza or calzone and scrape toppings off and eat that (ask for extra toppings if possible)!

And OMAD for me is not to starve myself purposely, I always pay attention to hunger signaling, like if I am sitting around a food court or around people who are eating and I am sitting their cobharring like a cobra because the amylase in my saliva wants to digest something (not good), the smell of food can trigger that too and if so then you really must be hungry and should eat right then until you start noticing that you really truly are not hungry the farther you space out your eating windows. I have seen people who work around food constantly, that lose more weight because they are satiated by the smell alone of food, so much so that they become resistant to the smell, so that it is easier for them to lose weight (not binge). I knew one gentlemen in the past that could not eat chicken because he worked around chickens most of his life, the smell of chicken repulsed him to no end…lol

(Sandra) #12

I wish that the smell of delicious food doesn’t have any effect on me… haha!

For me the issue is I don’t know whether I’m just hungry out of habit or I’m actually deprived of nutrients and need to eat? Or are we never really deprived because we have enough stored in our body to keep us going?

I just ate 1 small can of tuna, a low carb bagel with butter, 8 roma tomatoes and about 60g of salami. I feel like I am in a food coma I’m struggling to stay awake. :sleeping::sleeping::sleeping:

#13

I do OMAD during the week…I do the same dinner every day, just switch protein sources and veggies.

You have to get your head straight :slight_smile: stop thinking about food,keep busy and dont overcomplicate your meals. I stopped eating nuts and any form of dessert and/or sweetener a long time ago, it made me hungry and crave weird things. If you can’t eat enough in one sitting, have TMAD IF, maybe next day you’ll be so busy, you wont have time to eat twice…adjust to your schedule and your body :slight_smile:

I take my coffee and a 1l of tea with 1/4tsp losalt to work, have at least another bottle of water during the day and if i feel hungry, i lick a few salt grains…

(mags) #14

I find each day is different. Some days I can fast easily or OMAD and others I’m hungry all day. You have to adjust to what your body is demanding but it can be frustrating of course. If you get taken short again with hunger when you’re not prepared you need to find something, anything that isn’t carby. Cheese, pork rinds, olives, cooked meats. Every time you lapse into carbs you make your journey so much harder. I agree so much with the salt. I will lick salt liberally when fasting. Keep coconut oil or butter/ghee in a small container because a lick of that can help too. Good luck.

(Not a cow) #15

I started OMAD by using the 16/8 for a couple of weeks and then skipping my lunch on weekends when I could keep busy doing other things. I am doing OMAD consecutively and consistently now but eating a good meal for dinner at night, maybe 1500 - 1800 calories in one sitting. I will do breakfast on a day when I feel like it, but weight loss on OMAD, ie., moving the scales motivates me to continue. I"m not fat adapted, but not a problem, and like you said, sometimes in the afternoon I feel some hunger but just work through it. My window is 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm, and I don’t think I could last till 8 pm. Then again, 8 pm is bed-time for me ;(

(mole person) #16

I’ve been OMAD for over a year. It got me out of a stall I was in when trying to lose my last 10 pound and into maintenance. I find I start gaining back if I stray too much.

Like @Moo, I began with about two weeks of 16/8. When I did begin OMAD my hunger was no longer out of control, but many days I still felt some pangs on and off throughout the day. In my case at least, this went on for many months. No crazy hunger but still clearly hungry. However, I did push through it and it would almost always shortly disappear for a few hours before poking its head up again. Maybe my case was different because I was so close to goal weight, I don’t know. However, slowly, over time, even this did decline and now most days I never even think of food and have to remind myself when it’s time to cook dinner.

All that being said, even now certain circumstances will trigger earlier hunger. Serious stressors will, as will loads of hard exercise, or a particularly poor sleep (I have a fair bit of insomnia.). At this point I completely trust my body’s hunger signals and so when I get very hungry early in the day I just make a second meal of it. What I never do is have a snack. Snacking is the enemy of keto. It leads to more snacking and continuously elevated insulin. Jason Fung says that if you eat to eat a meal and I’ve found this advice to be invaluable.

Finally, I had a similar experience to @Meerkatsandy. I found that any nuts, fat bombs, or things with sweeteners messed up my signalling, as did many sorts of cheeses.

Something that I found very powerful early on was to only eat early certain foods that were not at all “snacky” to me. Some examples of this were given above, a can of tuna or sardines. In my case I used hard boiled eggs. Those sorts of foods aren’t likely to be craved or set off more cravings and you will be less likely to eat them when you aren’t hungry. Early on I used to try a snack of 1/4 cup of keto nuts, but that always ended in a lot more eating and craving.