I think it does matter when someone as well respected and smart as Megan Ramos doesn’t feel OMAD is optimal for weight loss. So, by extension, if that advice is to be respected and followed due to her substantial success and experience, knowing what is or is not OMAD for purposes of understanding her position is critical IMO.
Stated differently…if someone new is researching the pros and cons of OMAD and sees Megan’s opinion, they need to know what OMAD means as a first principle.
I hinted at this but came back to state it more clearly, Brian you are still doing a restricted eating window and that’s what’s important, whether it’s continuous eating or 2-3 smaller meals you still are getting a long fasting period daily in between daily eating windows. Generally people move to TMAD and focus on reducing the amount of time the eating window lasts, eventually opting for a single meal to further increase the fasting window. That’s the whole point of IF, TMAD and OMAD is having more hours of not eating than eating.
Okay, I understand why you feel that way. I just think that probably if you talked to her, she would likely agree that everyone is different and maybe in her studies/research she has found that OMAD doesn’t work for most people; but that even she would acknowledge that not all people are the same? I know that some people on the forum have said that they did OMAD for weight loss, and I see a lot doing TMAD or even Three meals a day. I just didn’t want you stressing out over the definition was all. I realize she is a very well known and respected person, I wasn’t undermining her at all.
This is a generalization, it all boils down to the individual. Many people lose weight just fine eating OMAD. Plenty of them on this site. I’m not putting down Megan’s expertise here, just that generalizations aren’t necessarily globally applicable. 
Understood. I’m not stressed at all. It was more because she said X about Y and I realized that I didn’t know what Y really meant.
Yes, definitely. But when someone like her, who has seen hundreds (thousands?) of people on weight loss journey suggest that OMAD isn’t optimal for weight loss, my ears perk up and my first response inernally was that I lacked a basic understanding of what OMAD means in that context (see my confusion regarding timing of meal). I then researched and couldn’t find any accepted definition such that “consuming all of your daily caloric intake within xx minutes = OMAD.” That’s why I wanted to start the discussion.
Although I still don’t know what OMAD means, timing-wise, through the help in this thread I’m reasonably confident that my eating pattern between 5pm-8pm is not OMAD.
I can rarely do OMAD, where this means eating all calories in a very short time period, say 30-45 minutes. To me, it’s like you sit down and eat all of your food and if you get up from the table to do something other than get more food, you’re done eating. If I fast 22 hours or so, I’ll eat within a longer window, say 2 hours. But I stop at some point, get up, do something else in a completely different room (not the eat in kitchen), and then come back to eat more. If I stay in one place and eat at the table, and eat all the food I want, and get up but don’t eat any more, that’s OMAD to me. I’ve been able to do this at most a handful of times.
When I eat, I usually eat two meals a day (TMAD), one around 11 am, and then one at dinner. If I’m really hungry, or I don’t eat enough at the first meal, I might eat some additional meat between then. This is relatively rare, and I try to avoid this by ensuring I eat enough at the first meal.
I’m not sure about basing everything off of Megan Ramos. She’d have us all fasting 36-42 hours three times per week. 
Great if you can do it, but I’m lucky to get 36 hours once per week and 4.5 days once a season.
Rather than laying this at the feet of poor Megan, perhaps time to invoke the Show Me The Science clause?
I think @ctviggen here is providing the correct context to understand Megan Ramos’ recommendation. They run a fasting clinic. They try to get people regularly doing 36-72 hour fasts for rapid weight loss. I’ve heard Ramos say that for some few people, who have very deranged metabolisms to start, only regular 5 day fasts work at all.
I lost nearly 100% of my weight and got down to a very slim 106 lbs on OMAD. I never noticed any sign of metabolic slowdown and my rate of losses were very consistent as long as I applied myself correctly.
Ilana Rose is correct. If you read the people Dr. Fung puts up on his page, they are fasting a ton. See this for instance:
After successfully completing a few 36-hour fasts, I committed to doing three 40-hour fasts in a single week.
https://idmprogram.com/idmsuccess-story-a-new-lease-on-life/
And that’s not unusual, it’s the norm.
So, their fasting schedules are very difficult, at least for me.
I think if you can do OMAD, even just sometimes, it’s a useful tool. For someone like me, I still eat a lot. I will EASILY eat two pounds of meat a day for my TMAD. That’s a ton of food to eat in one meal (for me, anyway), and I tend to eat late at night. For instance, tonight, I don’t get home until 8pm, Thursday not until 7:30pm, and I go to bed shortly after 9pm. To try to stuff 2+ pounds of meat into me, then basically go right to sleep, it just doesn’t work. So, if I try OMAD, it has to be on a day where I’m eating before 7pm, which is only a few days a week at most.
I don’t know my complete schedule yet, as my kids haven’t started dance, but twice per week, I’m home very late (again, kid activities). That’s just not conducive to OMAD.
As I continue to get thinner, maybe I’ll get to the point where OMAD is possible all the time. I’ll have to see.
OMAD = ICAO code for Bateen Airport, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
https://acukwik.com/Airport-Info/OMAD
That is what you really wanted, right?
I’m surprised no one brought up insulin. Maybe I missed it? If you drag out one meal over 4 hours then you’re not taking advantage of the opportunity that OMAD over 30 minutes offers with less insulin production. Right?
Good question. I have no idea. If I eat 1650 calories of salad, steak/chicken, fats/butters, vegetables, etc. over 30 minutes instead of 4 hours, are you saying that’d be an advantage vis a vis the amount of insulin produced by my body? If so, I’d like to learn/know more how and why that’s the case and what the science is behind it.
Right. Changes in insulin
https://www.yourhormones.info/hormones/insulin/
The main actions that insulin has are to allow glucose to enter cells to be used as energy and to maintain the amount of glucose found in the bloodstream within normal levels. The release of insulin is tightly regulated in healthy people in order to balance food intake and the metabolic needs of the body. This is a complex process and other hormones found in the gut and pancreas also contribute to this blood glucose regulation. When we eat food, glucose is absorbed from our gut into the bloodstream, raising blood glucose levels. This rise in blood glucose causes insulin to be released from the pancreas so glucose can move inside the cells and be used.
So, from what I understand, by spreading your eating out over 4 hours you are letting your glucose go up (and come down) over a longer period of time. To me, eating (grazing) over 4 hours isn’t a good plan because I want my glucose low. Now, maybe I could eat at the beginning of the window, eat in a 30 minute time frame and then not eat until 30 minutes before the window closes, and then eat again. That would give my glucose levels a chance to “normalize” before eating again. However, if I were to be constantly eating (grazing) my glucose would be high because I’m constantly putting fuel in my body.
For what its worth:
I’m only eating dinner, and its usually within a 30min window, sometimes a bit longer if I feel I’m still hungry/low on fat grams. You can see that my glucose goes up after eating, and then comes back down. I imagine that if I were to constantly eat (graze) then my glucose would remain high until I stopped giving my body fuel. Note: I don’t plan on doing that because in my case (cancer) I want to keep my glucose low.
You can also see the “spikes” in glucose when I got up in the morning, as my body was getting ready to start the day. I also imagine that the different spikes in the blue and green lines, after dinner, are representative of the different types of fuel I ate (carbs (probably the first spike), and then fat and protein (2nd and 3rd spike - not sure of the order).
Thanks for your thoughtful explanation and data. I understand this. Here’s my follow-up question. Suppose by eating all my 1650 calories over 4 hours, my blood sugar goes up and down between 80 and 115.
In contrast, let’s suppose I eat 1650 calories in 25 minutes and my blood sugar goes up to 135 for a period of time.
Which is “better,” or is this impossible to know because we’re missing data?
That is a very good question!
Without the data its hard to know for sure. Do you have a way to check your glucose to do a self-test?
I imagine the answer would lie in how long your glucose stayed high. It might be worth a self-test to see what would actually happen. Its too hard to say in theory because we don’t if the two eating patterns would have the same, or different, spikes. It would also depend on how long the glucose level stayed at 135. I know these are hypothetical numbers, so it makes it a bit harder. I also can’t imagine the same meal having two different max glucose levels, depending on how long you ate. Although I imagine that, in the first example, your glucose would remain at the upper end of the range for a longer time than in the second example.
But to be sure, we’d have to have the data (and the best way would be with a continuous or flash glucose monitor). No one wants to do fingersticks every 15 minutes for 4 hours!
Yep, I do have a glucometer. I’ll see what I can do when conditions are right and I eat what I normally eat. Interesting stuff!
What I like about the FreeStyle Libre is that it will take readings every 15 minutes, Visa a small sensor under the skin. Makes it convenient 
OMED, it should be per Megan, stands for On Maintenance Every Day ! I believe her point was that if you are eating one meal a day of a lower than normal amount of calories, you are just restricting calories. If you are eating 1600 calories a day, every day, then your body will adjust to only using 1600 calories a day. If you want to lose a lot of weight it won’t work, but if you just want to maintain, it’s an okay way of eating.
Dr Fung describes OMAD as a 24 Hour Intermediate Fast in his fasting book, so I’m not sure why Megan would say it’s not intermediate fasting ? If 18:6 is an IF then 22:2 or in your case 20:4 must also be an IF.
She keeps going back to this eat, fast, eat, fast as in ADF, and indicates that she would like you to have one day with no calories, or a small amount of calories and then another day with a larger amount, to keep your metabolism functioning at a high level.
I do OMAD and am losing about 2 lbs per week, eating at a weekly average of 1700 kcals/day, after taking into account some 0 calorie fast days. So some days I’m at 1700 kcals and other days I might eat 2500 kcal but averages out to 1700 on a weekly basis. I’m only fasting one day per week, but that switches it up somewhat. I think it’s important for weight loss, that you vary your calories often from one day to the next, even with the OMAD. I do TMAD on weekends also, but still average in the 1700 to 2500 KCals for the day.
Yes, and I wish he hadn’t worded it that way. For most people (despite the legions of Fungsters) 24 hours or more is EF - Extended Fasting. I guess if one eats rapidly, once per day, then the fast is darn near 24 hours, but eating once or more per day is usually said to be “Intermediate.”
But certainly - in common usage, IF is 22:2, 204, 18:6 etc.
