One meal a day. Sounds crazy? Not at all! It’s actually one of the most powerful fasts you can do. OMAD can help you lose weight, boost your energy, revive your gut health, and make you feel generally better throughout the day. It can be a bit difficult to get started which is why I’m going to be talking about the untold secrets of one meal a day!
Should you do OMAD every day? A lot of people throw themselves into fasting with a fanatical zeal, but it isn’t necessarily something that you need to do constantly. Personally, I switch between OMAD and intermittent fasting (16-hour fast, 8-hour window of eating), depending on the demands that I am putting on my body. If you are in the midst of training for a marathon or other endurance event, then OMAD might not be a great idea. You are going to need calories throughout the day, rather than packing them into a single meal. Intermittent fasting is probably a better fit for this kind of training regime.
Hunger can obviously be a powerful motivator to eat. When you start on an OMAD plan, you will likely feel a ravenous hunger for the first few days. But there are some things you can do to blunt that temptation to eat. You can drink black coffee in the late morning or early afternoon to mask the hunger. Sparkling mineral water is another way that you can help manage your hunger, as it’s loaded with minerals and can make you feel satiated. Green tea and apple cider vinegar are other ways to mitigate your hunger during the period when you can’t eat.
<< If you want to learn what to eat on OMAD, check out the OMAD Food Plan Video>>
What time should you eat your meal during OMAD? I prefer eating it at night. When you eat a massive meal, it puts your body into a parasympathetic state. This will put your nervous system into “rest” mode and make you tired as you digest the food. If you are doing your one meal in the middle of the afternoon, it could be difficult to get through the rest of the day. But at night, it is much less of a problem.
When you choose to eat your meal, you’re probably going to be incredibly hungry! My recommendation is to take it easy and make sure that you chew well and eat slowly. Take your time, it isn’t going anywhere!
Remember, you should never be fanatical about fasting. If you need to eat more than one meal for social reasons, you are doing endurance training, or any other reason, then you shouldn’t force yourself to do one meal a day. But if you were to adopt OMAD on a regular basis, you will start to see a huge difference in your energy level and general health. If you’d like to learn more about OMAD, or lots of other topics that you can use to excel your health, you can find more at the NuVision Excel YouTube channel.
Daily Nutritional Supplements Mentioned
The diet we follow on OMAD is the Heal Yourself Diet, for the full guide click here.
[Video Transcription] The Untold Secrets of One Meal a Day
In this video we’re talking about the untold secrets of one meal a day.
Hi, I’m Dr. Zyrowski from Nuvisionexcel.com. If you’re new to the channel, it’s such a pleasure to have you here. Be sure to subscribe, hit that little bell notification and join our notification community so you can excel your health and your life.
We’re talking about the untold secrets of one meal a day. Here’s the deal, I’ve done tons of videos on OMAD, so if you haven’t seen those yet be sure to check out my OMAD playlist. What I want to do is take you through a practical guide of how I actually navigate one meal a day and just break it down for you. I’m sure you’re going actually have a lot of things that you can add, and you can put those in the comment section below but, I’m going to go through and teach you some of the things that I use in order to make one meal a day easy for me and how I navigate this.
Let’s go ahead and jump right in and let’s start with hunger. A lot of times when you first start with one meal a day you’ll experience ravenous hunger. It will actually subside in three to four days where it doesn’t bother you that much anymore but the other thing when it comes to hunger is there’s a couple things you can do to actually blunt that hunger.
One of the trick I’ll use is using black coffee. Instead of drinking black coffee in the morning when I’m not hungry anyway, I’ll push it back to late morning or early afternoon to when I actually start getting hungry and it will actually go and help blunt that hunger. Black coffee worked very well. If you’re going to use cream, use very minimal amount of cream because it will throw you out of your fast. Anything that raises blood sugar or insulin will break your fast, so be careful with that. Black coffee is really powerful.
The next thing I use is sparkling mineral water. I specifically use the mineral water because it is loaded with minerals and that’s very beneficial when you’re fasting so that helps make you feel satiated. When you’re starting to feel hungry, drink some of the sparkling mineral water, it really helps with the hunger issue.
Next thing that I’ll use is some green tea and I’ll also use our apple cider vinegar fasting drink, I’ll put a link to that below, but those all really help mitigate that hunger response.
A lot of people thing too that when they feel that hunger come that it’s going to continue getting worse. Well, the hunger comes and goes, you’ll maybe feel it for fifteen, twenty minutes and then it disappears. It’s likely going to be gone the rest of the day. You just kind of got to get through it. Make sure that during that time you have something going on, try to stay focused, and work through that hunger. The pain will come and go and it will subside and you can move on in life.
The next thing here is every day. Should I do OMAD every day? How I navigate OMAD is there’s some days that I do it and there’s some days that I don’t. A lot of people get fanatical when they jump into these different topics. OMAD is a tool that you have in your toolbox, a strategy but it is not a thing that you have to do every single day.
I switch between OMAD and intermittent fasting, which is just the sixteen and eight rule all the time. You can do the same thing too. Just because you started OMAD does not mean you have to do it every single day. You’ll probably like doing it more often than not because you’ll probably feel better, but once again depending on what’s going on and how my life is at that time, I’ll switch it up a bit. I always either do intermittent fasting or OMAD, but I bounce back between the two.
Now, just to be clear on that OMAD is just one meal a day, intermittent fasting is sixteen hours of fasting and then eating within an eight-hour period. Now, one of the things that will determine if I’m doing OMAD or intermittent fasting is the training that I’m doing at the time. When I’m doing excessive miles, like let’s say if I go out and I run ten miles in one day, then OMAD is not for me that day because for one, I’m going to be extraordinary hungry and it’s going to be very uncomfortable to eat all the calories that I need during that one meal, that one setting so intermittent fasting fits me better. The days that I’m going and doing a lot of cardiovascular exercise, running and a few other things, I’ll go ahead and just use regular intermittent fasting. Weight training, I have no problem doing on OMAD. The other things about training that I want to mention is that it is best if you actually do your training prior to your first meal.
Once again, don’t be fanatical about it. If you can’t, then that’s fine. However, there’s just tons of proven benefits and fat burning and optimizing hormones and raising testosterone and growth hormones, so many other things if you can actually train in a fasted state.
Let’s go ahead and move on to meal time. A lot of people ask when do you eat your meal on one meal a day? I like eating it at night. There’s a little bit of a scientific reason for that and that is that when you’re eating that one massive meal, essentially what it’s going to do is put your body into a parasympathetic state. That is the way that your nervous system operates when it’s in its rest and digest. You’re digesting all that food, it’s about bedtime and it puts you in that parasympathetic state and it’s going to make you tired. If you’re eating that one meal a day in the afternoon It’s probably going to be very hard to not just completely crash in the afternoon or, if you’re doing it in the morning or what have you. One meal a day for me is best at night. I know that some people have different have work scheduled and some people work nights, look, just flip it and do what’s best for you. Once again, you don’t have to be fanatical about it, it doesn’t have to be at six o’clock at night or seven o’clock at night, it can be whenever works best for you. For me, it’s at night and then scientifically I like it at night because that’s going to put your body in a better state to sleep and rest and also digest that food.
Next thing is, eating your meal. There’s a couple things about eating your meal. First of all, when people get to that meal time typically they just have an absolute ravenous hunger that they just want to throw down anything they can find. When you’re eating your meal, first of all my recommendation is to make sure that you’re chewing it well, eating it slowly just because it can cause digestive problems if you’re just throwing these things down the gullet and not chewing it well and eating all of your food in that one huge meal.
Another thing that I like to use when eating that one meal is I’ll use digestive enzymes. There’s certain things that can affect your digestive enzyme levels a lot of exercise and training is one of them. If you’re having a hard time breaking down that food, digestive enzymes are recommended, that’s what I’ll use quite often during that one meal. The other thing, when eating your meal make sure you’re eating high quality meals. I do a video on the OMAD food plan and what to eat when on OMAD. I’ll put that in the description below as well.
The last thing I want to mention about eating your meal is it’s very important to plan your meals. If you’re going in to your meal and you’re just grabbing whatever you can find, you’re going to find yourself eating all kinds of junk, you’re going to find that you’re not eating a good nutrient dense meal, you’re going to find that you’re also not eating a balanced meal. I find for me, if I don’t have my meal planned then I’m all over the place so I like to make sure that my meals are planned so that I’m kind of navigating that meal very well, making sure I’m getting a broad spectrum of different nutrients and different foods and balanced carbs and proteins and fats. Make sure you plan your meals out and have an idea of what you’re going to eat for it so that you don’t really find yourself crashing by eating low quality foods.
The last topic for discussion is supplements. When I’m on one meal a day, first of all, I take my supplements during my eating window. I do not take them while I’m fasted. The other thing about supplements is that I’m a firm believer that you need to make sure you’re taking a broad spectrum multi-mineral. We use Multi-mineral active, taking Neuroboost which is an Omega 369 essential fatty acid, DHA as well and lastly, the probiotics. We use a Probiotic Strength. Now, the reason I take those is first of all, it’s scientifically proven that people are very deficient in these different nutrients and that also you’re not getting them from your meals as you should. The Probiotic Strength is going to help keep your gut healthy. The active Multi-min Daily is going to work to make sure you’re getting broad spectrum nutrients, vitamins and minerals and then the Neuroboost is really designed to help support neurological function, neurological function, cellular health and all that. You really should take these different supplements regardless if you’re doing one meal a day or not. Those are just the basic core nutrients in order to maintain good health.
Anyway, go ahead and post in the comment section below if you have any other questions, or you have anything to add to this. Also, be sure to subscribe to my channel right here, give this video a thumbs-up and check out my other videos on OMAD because I’ve do so many of these great videos that teach you how to navigate OMAD and share them with your friends and I’ll see you in the next video.