For most people, there are no serious dangers involved in eating one meal a day, other than the discomforts of feeling hungry. That said, there are some risks for people with cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Eating one meal a day can increase your blood pressure and cholesterol.
The one-meal-a-day diet — also known as 23:1 intermittent fasting — may help people lose weight and body fat. However, it can lead to hunger and cravings and may not be suitable for everyone.
How to get started with OMAD. It's best to start with 12-14 hour overnight fasts, which helps eliminate late-night snacking. Once you master the 12-14 hour overnight fast, the most logical and easiest progression is to move to 16-18 hour fasts. Add 1-hour of fasting time every week until you are fasting for 22-23 hours ...
It's not an extreme way of eating. Anyone looking to lose weight, boost energy, and reduce hunger should try 2 meals a day. Who isn't it for? The vast majority of people are perfectly fine to start 2 Meal Day.
Pick a four-hour sector of the day, say noon to 4 p.m. or 2 to 6 p.m., and always eat within one hour of that time to stay consistent from day to day. Use one dinner-size plate, about 11 inches in diameter, for your meal. To avoid having piles of food, the meal shouldn't be higher than 3 inches.
"Across all peer-reviewed research and health practices, three meals a day is a general recommendation to encourage consistent, adequate energy intake," Miluk said.
OMAD can then start to look a lot like chronic caloric restriction. Although chronic caloric restriction helps with initial weight loss, it poses long-term concerns because it tends to lower resting metabolic rate, which makes weight loss very difficult to maintain.
The Theory: Nutrition experts tend to recommend eating 3 balanced meals (350 to 600 calories each) and 1 to 3 snacks per day (between 150 and 200 calories each). The calories for each meal and snack depend on a variety of factors including, height, weight, age, gender and activity level.
While many folks still plan their days around “three square meals,” it turns out the number of meals you eat may not be so important. How you eat those meals is what matters most when it comes to decreasing the risk of heart disease and other health problems that come along with being overweight.
Another study found that eating smaller meals more frequently throughout the day had little effect on fasting glucose levels. However, it did conclude that waiting until the end of the day to eat the majority of calories had a detrimental effect on blood glucose control.
One of the latest trends among celebrities is the “one meal a day” diet (or “Omad”). Fans of Omad include Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin. Many proponents of Omad claim it helps them better manage their weight and keep fit.
This extreme style of intermittent fasting actually helps take fat off of the liver. This can help correct fatty liver disease.
You need to eat only once when on OMAD diet, but that doesn't mean that you will not even have water for the rest of the day. Keeping yourself hydrated is the key to lose weight. So, drink plenty of water. You can even have coffee, tea, and other calorie-free beverages when following this diet.
“On a day you don't eat for 24 hours, you're guaranteed to be losing a third or half a pound of non-water weight that's mostly from body fat,” Pilon told Global News.
"The Romans believed it was healthier to eat only one meal a day," food historian Caroline Yeldham told BBC News Magazine in 2012. "They were obsessed with digestion and eating more than one meal was considered a form of gluttony.
To begin with, skipping dinner could lead to nutritional deficiency in your body, since you need micronutrients like magnesium, Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D3 for daily functioning. And if you continue this practice for long, you put yourself at the risk of becoming malnourished or developing nutritional deficiencies.
For the majority of human history, people ate one or two meals per day. The current time-restricted eating patterns like the 16:8 or one meal a day diet (OMAD) mimic this ancient phenomenon. During periods without food, the body evolved to tap into fat stores for energy.
The amount of food we consume daily has a significant impact on bodily function. Most adults need a minimum of 2000 calories to sustain metabolism, muscle activity, and brain function. However, too many calories can lead to weight gain and a variety of diseases.
Most people are brought up thinking that dinner should be the biggest meal of the day, meaning they opt for a light breakfast and lunch. However, research has found that a smaller dinner and larger lunch could be the key to helping you shift those weight.
Breakfast is often called 'the most important meal of the day', and for good reason. As the name suggests, breakfast breaks the overnight fasting period. It replenishes your supply of glucose to boost your energy levels and alertness, while also providing other essential nutrients required for good health.
OMAD promotes mental efficiency, too. Most people find it immensely freeing to not have to think about food. OMAD essentially provides a condensed form of fasting's mental benefits. The primary difference is you get to experience these benefits daily, not just monthly or quarterly as you would with a much longer fast.
Although various forms of intermittent fasting have been shown to be an effective way to shed pounds, the OMAD diet is not recommended by nutritionists and can even be dangerous for people with certain health problems.
Nutrition professionals do not advise trying the OMAD diet for any length of time. It's incredibly restrictive and unsustainable and can lead to extreme weight loss, nutrient deficiencies and binging.