100%. (And my feelings don’t get hurt - don’t worry). I definitely don’t give it a roll anymore. I actually fell into it naturally for awhile, because I didn’t like thinking about eating all day, but then I also was not mindful at all when I did eat and I just didn’t do it well. I’m not a OMAD dude!
Optimising nutrition seems like the most neurotic thing to me. Life should be about making good choices. Not measuring every fucking nutrient to make yourself feel all good about yourself.
OMAD is conducive to that mindset plus I buy into the concept.
Our ancestors would have killed for one meal a day. They most likely did actually😂
Which health markers? What do you think are the main hormonal differences with time restricted eating? In my case, 16:8 or 18:6 suck. I tend to gain bodyfat when I eat 1-2 large meals in a 6-8 hour window.
I suspect that having long fasting periods improves metabolic flexibility which is primarily the body’s ability to turn to fat, or gluconeogenesis or ketones as energy sources since each of these require specific enzymes that get upregulated. I have been reviewing metabolic pathways recently and apparently each glucogenic amino acid has its own enzyme or even group of enzymes that is responsible for turning it into pyruvate to provide materials for gluconeogenesis. Each of those enzymes gets downregulated with disuse which got me thinking that people probably get more efficient with autophagy if they fast regularly since those enzymes will stay upregulated. Most metabolic pathways up and down regulate over periods of 3-10 days.
I think that there are people who get a more pronounced cortisol release with fasting and end up being temporarily hormonally insulin resistant from the cortisol/adrenaline/glucagon getting turned up by fasting. Then they eat a big meal and tend to deposit it as fat because of the high counterregulatory hormone levels, so OMAD may not work for people who make a lot of cortisol during a fast, or even who rely on stimulants to get through zero calorie periods. So I think some people who are more stressed by fasting do better eating multiple small meals. If fasting makes it hard to fall asleep it is probably because of elevated stress hormones. Others don’t have a pronounced stress hormone response to fasting. Granted, slipping into ketosis and becoming an efficient fat burner are likely to turn down the stress hormones. So OMAD on high carbs may backfire by keeping people more glucose dependent. Becoming a fat burner and also de-stressing may help people respond to calorie restriction better. Hard intense training, can also boost counter-regulatories.
And what’s supposed to be different about it? You can do whatever training you are doing normally. It’s just apparently not advised to do fasted training for longer than 1 hour according to some studies (however don’t quote me on that, inb4 it happens that these studies were misinterpreted or something, as it commonly happens to be with studies these days), so just for safety, I hit a protein shake + some carbs after I hit 1 hour in the gym. There’s nothing special about fasted training and OMAD.
I’ve tried with many permutations prior to strongman type sessions: 36 hours water-fasted; exogenous ketones; C8 (MCT) oil; protein loading the previous evening; carbs previous evening, carbs pre-WO, etc, and, trust me, there is a huge difference between total fasting and the rest.
In my opinion, lower rep strength sessions with longer rest periods fit well with total fasting. Not much else does.
I’ve read that you need leucine/protein every four to six hours to trigger mtor and muscle growth. There was a layne norton article and a few others. Personally I love omad. Pack some water and head out the door. I have a bcaa and greens drink on the way home from work and then eat my meal.