With intermittent fasting at the forefront of the online nutrition/health community, there are several different ways that people are choosing to schedule their meals in order to optimize their health. While most people who intermittent fast tend to aim for a more moderate 6-10 hour feeding window, there are many others who have taken this idea to the extreme and are fitting all of their food for the day into one meal.
So, what are the pros and cons of eating one meal a day? By limiting all of your caloric consumption to a 1-2 hour span, you will effectively 1. Promote the healing process 2. Simplify your lifestyle and 3. Naturally restrict your calories. With that in mind, there are certain aspects of such an approach that may not be suitable for some people. Some of the possible negatives of only eating one meal in a day are 1. You may have a hard time eating enough calories 2. You may overstuff yourself during this one meal and 3. You may experience some hunger management challenges.
Pros
Promotes healing
The number one benefit of eating one meal per day in my opinion is the fact that you are effectively fasting for 22-23 hours each and every day. As you probably know, fasting is an extremely powerful tool that can produce some great results in terms of improving one’s health. By only eating one meal per day, you are allowing your digestive system to spend most it’s time repairing and healing rather than laboring over digestion.
This process in which your body initiates it’s “house cleaning” mechanisms and seeks to repair any damaged cells and replace them with new healthy cells is known as autophagy. Autophagy is a word that goes hand in hand with fasting. Although a more spread out intermittent fasting schedule can also prove to be successful in promoting autophagy, the OMAD approach may be even more effective as it calls for a more extended fasting window.
Simplifies things
Another great benefit of eating one meal a day is that if simplifies things. You don’t have to meal prep a bunch of meals for the week or worry about finding a healthy restaurant near work. You really don’t ever need to even think about food until it is time to feast. For many people, this can lead to an increase in production as you simply give yourself more time to accomplish things that you need to get done.
This is something that is also associated with intermittent fasting in general. Even if you decide to eat 2 meals a day rather than one, the amount of time you are spending eating, preparing, and buying your food will be greatly reduced if you are coming from a more typical 3-5 meals a day eating schedule. In my opinion, simplicity is crucial in any diet plan. If it takes a lot of time and effort in order to eat a certain way, you’re much less likely to stick with that way of eating. Make things easy on yourself.
Naturally restricts calories
Along with fasting, caloric restriction is something that is greatly associated with natural healing and health improvements in general. In the modern western way of living, overconsumption of calories is an extremely prevalent issue. Although I have always been one to believe that what you are eating is more important than how much you’re eating, over-eating is typically just not a good thing. This is especially true if you are trying to heal a disease or lose weight.
By going OMAD and confining all of your calories to one meal, it is very likely that you are going to eat much less than you would if you were eating say 3 times a day. You won’t have to think about counting calories or worry about meal size. You will simply eat until you are satiated and the amount of food you eat will be monitored naturally as you are allowing your hunger to determine how much you consume.
Cons
May be hard to eat enough calories
This first con sort of counters the last benefit in the pros section. Although there are many benefits that accompany caloric restriction, it is important that your long term diet contains all of the calories and all of the nutrition you need in order to fuel your body. If you are only eating one meal a day, it may be hard for many people to fit all of the food they need into one sitting.
Personally, this is a reason why I have always used the OMAD approach as more of a healing tool rather than a long term diet plan. I have always had a fast metabolism and seem to burn through the food that I eat fairly quickly. If I have a highly active day, which I do very often, I have a hard time getting all of the energy I need for the day out of just one meal. I just end up spending a large chunk of my day running on empty and that isn’t what you want out of your long term diet.
You may overstuff yourself
Another thing about cramming all of your daily calories into one sitting is that you may be overstuffing yourself. While some people can handle digesting more food than others, eating 2,000 calories or so in one sitting is going to be taxing on the digestive system for many people. You may feel bloated, tired, or even sick after consuming so much food at once. Not to mention the fact that your digestive system may not be capable of properly assimilating all of that nutrition at once, so you may be compromising your digestion.
With that said, many people do find that their body is more than capable of handling these heavy loads. For these people, eating only one meal a day may be the perfect approach for them. There is also something to be said here about the types of foods you are eating during your meal. Your ability to digest the food you are eating is amongst other things, dependent on the digestibility of your food. Really dialing in on developing a dietary approach that lends itself to optimal digestion is key.
Hunger management challenges
This is another point that is especially true for people who live active lifestyles. If you are engaging in physical activity throughout the day, it may be a little unreasonable for you to wait until dinner time to eat. The goal here is not to starve yourself but rather develop an eating schedule that is going to optimize your nutritional input. If you are spending your whole day with your stomach rumbling and longing for that one meal, then this approach may not be for you.
With this in mind, this is something that may require a bit of an adjustment period. You may find that as time goes on, your body will become adjusted to this way of eating. This goes for any nutritional change in general. I often find that people give up on things way too easy when it comes to their diet. Although it’s entirely possible that OMAD may not be the best solution for you, I think that you should give anything you try a fair and honest shot. Don’t just give up because it’s hard.
My Take
As I mentioned, I personally have always used the OMAD approach as more of a healing protocol rather than a long term diet approach. I have found that on most days, I feel better and have more energy if I spread my calories out of a longer period of time. But this doesn’t mean that you will have the same experience. There are many people out there who are enjoying great success following a one meal a day style of eating. If you are able to pull it off, I believe that the benefits are extraordinary.
Fasting is one of the most powerful natural healing tools. By adhering to an OMAD approach and only eating 1 meal a day, you are allowing your body to spend 22-23 hours every day in a fasted state. It is up to you to decide whether or not that is what is best for your body and your lifestyle. Although we are all different and what works for one person may not work for another, I believe that experimenting with OMAD or intermittent fasting could prove to be a worthwhile investment for many people who wish to heal from disease, lose weight, or just optimize their overall health.
