Dietitian Ayşe Tuğba ŞENGEL
Hello everyone, I'm dietitian Ayşe Tuğba Şengel. Welcome to my blogg. Today, I'm here with a really wonderful blog. The title of our blog is: What is the OMAD diet? Today, I'll be talking all about it – how it helps with quick weight loss, what its benefits are, and what its downsides might be. I truly hope this blog ends up being very useful for everyone.
First, let's talk about what the OMAD diet actually is. One of the main principles of the OMAD diet is a 24-hour time frame. Imagine your day – this diet suggests that you should leave only a 1 to 2-hour eating window within that entire day. To put it more clearly: you eat within a 1 to 2-hour period, and for the remaining 22 to 23 hours, you consume absolutely nothing. Of course, you'll be fasting during those other hours, but you can have calorie-free drinks like water, herbal tea, or unsweetened coffee.
This diet is generally done for fat burning purposes, and many people say they've seen benefits and that it helped them burn fat. But I want to make a quick but important note here: If the OMAD diet doesn't fit your lifestyle – meaning you're only doing it to burn fat and lose weight, but you won't be able to keep it up afterward – then I want you to think carefully before starting this diet. Because as you know, one of the most important factors in weight loss is being able to maintain the weight you've lost. And being able to maintain it comes down to sustainability. Otherwise, you'll say, "I did the OMAD diet for a month," and that's where it'll stay.
Now, let me explain what OMAD stands for. OMAD is an English acronym – "One Meal a Day." It means eating just one single meal per day. As you know, these types of diets usually come to us from abroad; they became popular there first, and then we started applying them here in Turkey, gaining popularity as well.
So, as we said, this diet generally asks you to leave a 1 to 2-hour eating window during the most active parts of your day, and then fast for the remaining hours. What do we mean by the most active parts of the day? Lunch hours, for example – let's say between 12 PM and 2 PM. You eat all your food, your entire meal, during that time, and then you stay hungry for all the other hours. That's how we do the OMAD diet.
Now, as a dietitian, I want to give you a quick recommendation here. If you have gout, if you have diabetes, if you're a child – sometimes mothers want to put their children on this diet because of their weight, but children are still growing, and this isn't appropriate for them – or if you're a breastfeeding or pregnant woman, please do not do these kinds of diets. Make sure to consult your doctor first.
You know, the OMAD diet isn't actually something completely unfamiliar to us. Has it crossed your mind why? Because it's very similar to what we do every year during Ramadan. In Ramadan, we usually have two meals – iftar and sahur – but because people work, they often prefer not to wake up for sahur. They're afraid of being tired the next day, or they might wake up, fall back asleep, then struggle with thirst or headaches until morning. So many people just have iftar and that's it. So in a way, we're not strangers to the OMAD diet. And since I usually give fasting-friendly diets in my own office during Ramadan, I have some idea of what the results of this OMAD-like approach look like. And now I'll talk about those results.
So first, if you want to start the OMAD diet, my advice to you is to first spend one or two weeks eating normally – but gradually transition to healthier eating. What do I mean by that? Start having snacks, reduce your carbohydrate intake a little, so that your body enters this diet more rested and with balanced blood sugar. That way, you won't struggle too much during the first 3 or 4 days. That's what we used to do during Ramadan anyway. The clients who came to me already on a diet were able to fast in the OMAD style very comfortably, without issues. So that's my recommendation in that regard. But of course, with the OMAD diet, you don't have to prepare beforehand. You can start tomorrow with no problems.
Now, let's talk about the benefits of the OMAD diet. The most important benefit is that after a while, your feeling of hunger will disappear. You've already experienced this during Ramadan – even though you fast for so many hours, you struggle for the first week, but after that, hunger goes away, thirst goes away. We can confirm this ourselves.
Additionally, your fat burning will increase. Research has shown this. I also confirmed this in my office with my clients – everyone who fasted saw a reduction in their fat measurements at the end of the month. In fact, we saw some very high levels of fat loss: 5 kilos of pure fat gone in a month, 6 kilos of fat gone. Normally, as you know, when you lose weight, maybe 3.5 of those 5 kilos come from fat and 1.5 from water retention. So from that perspective, I also confirm the fat-burning effect – I've seen it with my own experiences.
Besides that, you will lose weight. Since you're eating only one meal, fasting for a long time will both burn fat and help you lose weight. They also say that the body enters a state of autophagy. For those who don't know what autophagy is, let me explain. Autophagy is when, after a long period of fasting, the body's sugar and fat stores are depleted, and the body needs something to burn for energy. So what does it do? It burns harmful toxins and dead cells and turns them into energy. So while the body is getting energy from those sources, we also get rid of those toxins and dead cells. So autophagy actually acts as a cleansing mechanism for our body. We say that autophagy starts around 18 to 20 hours of fasting – that's what research results suggest. So these are the benefits.
Now, let's talk a little about the downsides. When you do this diet, your metabolism might slow down. That usually happens because you burn fat quickly at first, and then in the second month, the body might try to put the brakes on, possibly causing a metabolic slowdown. That's one of the potential harms you might see. But don't let it discourage you. I think it won't continue like that – your body will recover.
Constipation can also occur. Generally, when the number of meals decreases, we see constipation in people. I couldn't quite compare this diet to fasting here, because in OMAD, since you're allowed to drink water, green tea, coffee, as much as you want outside of that 1 to 2-hour eating window, that actually helps prevent constipation. But still, constipation might happen due to the reduced meal frequency.
Now, of course, if there are people here who have tried the OMAD diet, I'd be very happy if you'd write your experiences in the comments below. Because people are so different – some may have tried it, some may not – and we can all learn from the results.
Aside from that, your body might retain water. You know, when there's only one meal, the body tends to burn more fat, but in terms of water retention, you might experience a very small issue of maybe 1 to 2 kilos.
Now, before you start the OMAD diet, here's another recommendation: please get a medical checkup and have blood work done. At least then you'll know if you're suitable for the OMAD diet. If your blood sugar is off, you might not be able to do it, and you might end up unhappy. So it's really important to consult a doctor or dietitian.
When you do the OMAD diet, we still need to eat healthily. Generally, men prefer the OMAD diet a lot – especially to avoid dealing with food all the time, not having to cook vegetables or meat, and eating whatever they want in one meal. Then, after fasting for about 22 to 23 hours, they lose weight as desired, or at least maintain their weight without gaining. So men really like this approach.
But even if you're doing the OMAD diet, I generally recommend eating healthy. Because our bodies need healthy fats, balanced proteins, and carbohydrates too. So I'd be happy if you paid attention to those balances.
Now, I'm going to give you three sample meal menus. If you want to do OMAD while eating healthily, lose weight, and speed up fat burning, these menus are for you. But before I do that, I want to tell you about a study that was done – comparing the OMAD diet with a normal diet. I'll share the link to the article somewhere here. It's a really good article, and you can access it for free. Of course, the article is in English, but you can easily get ChatGPT to translate it paragraph by paragraph – that's what I do, it saves me time. I recommend you read the details – it's very interesting.
So, let's get to the results of the study. 13 people were included in the study. These were lean, normally eating individuals. First, they were given a three-meal-a-day plan, and then the OMAD diet (one meal a day). Both diets had the same number of calories and the same content. Only then can we compare the results – if the content is different, the comparison wouldn't be valid.
13 people started, 11 completed the study. The results for those eating one meal a day compared to those eating three meals a day were as follows: Fat burning was slightly higher in the one-meal group. As a result, their insulin sensitivity increased a bit – meaning insulin started working better. These people lost weight compared to the three-meal group. The three-meal group also lost weight, but the OMAD group lost a bit more.
Also, they didn't experience any loss of strength during exercise. You know how sometimes we say, if you go to the gym without eating anything, you might feel weak or lose energy. But in this study, that didn't happen – no loss of energy or strength. Also, no muscle loss was observed. And they did lose weight.
The only negative result – and they have some theories about why this happened – was that LDL cholesterol increased in these people. Normally, we know that when you eat very well, your body fat percentage goes down, and LDL cholesterol also goes down. I've experienced this myself and seen it in many clients. But in this diet, while everything else seemed perfect, LDL cholesterol increased slightly. So when you do this diet, please do it under a doctor's or dietitian's supervision. Or if you're doing it on your own, get your blood tested from time to time. In fact, I think you should get a blood test before starting this diet, and then compare afterward. Because sometimes people's bodies react differently – you might think you're doing well, but things could go wrong. For example, an apple is a healthy food, but we can't give it to certain patients. If someone has too much potassium or sodium in their body, we might not give them apple, or only a very small amount. So special situations can arise.
Now, I think I've covered everything I wanted to say in this blog. But earlier I mentioned an article and an experiment, and I just realized I skipped a small detail. I want to give you that information right away.
In that experiment, they did a three-meal-a-day plan and a one-meal-a-day plan. I forgot to mention the timing of the one meal. They gave the participants their meal between 5 PM and 7 PM. They fasted for the remaining hours. Earlier in the blog, we said that OMAD is generally recommended during more active hours – like 12, 1, or 2 PM. But as you can see from the results of this experiment, even when they ate between 5 and 7 PM – later in the day – the participants still burned fat and lost weight. So what can we conclude from this? You can actually set your eating window to any time that suits you. Whatever time works for you, whatever you can sustain more easily. I know from my own clients who do OMAD that some eat late – you know, even at 8 or 9 PM – and they still burn fat. So I don't think you should get too hung up on the timing. You can even shift it to the evening.
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