One Meal A Day is a fasting strategy that has a lot of merit.
But before you start One Meal A Day, you should be aware that there's an ugly side to OMAD.
And if you're making these common mistakes that many people do, it can destroy your health.
Let me explain in detail.
But before we get started, I'm Dr. Zyrowski, and I started a holistic healing center about
six years ago so I could help people just like you take control of your health naturally.
Because true health only comes naturally.
So I became familiar with this style of eating while I was training, boxing and Jiu Jitsu
at the gym.
Many of the fighters at the gym were following a diet called the Warrior Diet.
Now, this is going to be a diet where you fast for 20 hours and then you eat all your
meals within a four-hour period.
It's a diet that was developed by a former member of the Israeli Special Forces, who
designed the diet to, really, mimic the eating patterns of ancient warriors where they didn't
eat throughout the day, but then they feasted at night.
The purpose of the Warrior Diet is to really force that survival instinct in the body.
It's designed to help keep your brain sharp during the day, boost energy levels, but also
help you burn fat.
And this is one of the reasons people love it, it is because of that fat burning benefit
that it has to offer.
Looking at One Meal A Day, it's a little bit more intense than the Warrior Diet because
you're forcing all your meals within a two-hour period, and then you're fasting the rest of
the day.
The good news is, is that I've had a lot of people over the years come to me and say that
this style of eating has really transformed their health in a big way.
And I followed One Meal A Day on and off for many years.
I'll wake up first thing in the morning, and I'll have a black coffee, then I won't eat
throughout the entire day.
I'll push all my meals back until nighttime.
But during the day I'll have a few things, I'll have some sparkling water in order to
help satiate hunger.
I'll have some electrolytes in order to help keep my energy levels up, but also keep good
blood sugar balance.
And then, throughout the day, another thing I'll do is I'll sprinkle in some apple cider
vinegar drinks.
I mean this just helps with gut health.
It helps keep your blood sugar lower.
Then when it comes to nighttime, I'll go, and break my fast with, like, a soup, a salad.
And then over the next two hours, I'll go, and eat that one big meal that is going to
be based on low carb.
And then I'll probably throw in a little keto treat at the end of that meal.
Now, I know, our community of Wellness Warriors like it when I give it to you straight.
So I'm going to share with you my personal experience and some of the troubleshooting
that I've had to go through when doing One Meal A Day.
But also, because clinically I work with the general public, I want to share with you what
I typically see happen when people start OMAD.
Some of the common benefits that I see come out of OMAD are going to be things like decreased
inflammation, weight loss.
You're going to see metabolic balancing; so if you have some blood sugar control issues,
high blood sugar, high insulin levels, metabolic balancing is a big benefit that comes from
it.
You're also going to notice that you have some more energy that comes from it.
And I also see people just start to find that their brain is working so much better.
That you're activating those ketones in the body and your brain is sharper throughout
the entire day.
Now, being that I've done this for many years, there is some troubleshooting that I have
to do from time to time.
For one, I definitely have to add in electrolytes.
A lot of times what I noticed is that after exercising first thing in the morning, I can
have some hypoglycemic patterns that can show up in the morning hours.
So adding in electrolytes really helps balance that out, and give me more energy, it just
overall will make me feel a lot better.
And then there's another thing that I find that I have to add in from time to time, and
this is when I'm going through periods of stress.
And those periods of stress, maybe it's work related stress.
Maybe I'm not sleeping well at night, and maybe my kids are keeping me up all night.
One of the things I'll do is I'll add in B vitamins, okay, a really good, comprehensive
B vitamin.
And then I'll also add in adaptogenic herbs, okay, this helps me counteract the stress.
If I do this, I feel pretty good.
And if I don't, I'll feel like trash when I'm doing OMAD.
What I'll do is I'll put a link down in the description below to my free, updated OMAD
food plan that has all of these resources I'm talking about and so much more to help
you get started with OMAD today.
Now when I see myself struggling with stress, I just default back to 16 and eight intermittent
fasting.
I come off of OMAD.
Back in the day, I would try to force it, but there's just no point.
There's no point in piling on metabolic stress, physical stress, maybe it's emotional stress
because it's not healthy for the body at all.
And so what I do is I back off.
Because if I don't, I notice that I don't feel well, and it, actually, really starts
to disrupt my sleep pretty heavily.
Throughout this entire process I've found what I personally best respond to.
I find that doing 16 and eight intermittent fasting is my core strategy, it is really
where I need to be.
However, I sprinkle in One Meal A Day, at typically about two times a week.
It's important to realize that everybody responds differently, everybody's genetics; you're
just an environment that you're in, and in your general health circumstances are all
going to be different.
So what works for you may not work well for another person, which works for me.
It may not be the right plan for you.
I want you to really understand that because when you figure this out, and you dial in
what's best for you, and you don't put yourself in a box that you have to stick within, you're
gonna get the best sustainable results.
It's also important to realize, very important to realize that the more extreme you are,
it does not equal better results.
And many people tend to trend in a very extreme direction, let me give you an example.
So let's say you start 16 and eight intermittent fasting, but you want to be a little more
hardcore so you move to One Meal A Day.
And then you follow the One Meal A Day strategy that I use where we eat our meal within a
one to two-hour period.
But that's still not hardcore enough for you, so you want to compress all your meals within
a 30-minute time frame.
And then after that, it's still not enough.
So then you want to add in the ketogenic diet.
And because you're not losing weight, and you're frustrated, you start cutting your
calories.
But then at the end of that, you're still not winning.
Your health conditions aren't going away, you're not feeling better.
In fact, you're feeling worse.
And then this is typically when people reach out to me, right.
They're frustrated, they're broken, they gave up.
The problem is, and this is the worst problem out of all of it, they developed an eating
disorder.
More extreme rarely is ever going to equal better results.
What equals better results is balance and sustainability.
But balance and sustainability doesn't include massively undercutting your calories.
It doesn't include disciplining yourself as if you're a child to the point where you have
no enjoyment in the food that you're eating, in the life that you live.
It doesn't include following an eating strategy that makes you wildly uncomfortable.
Because if you do these types of things, what happens is you're able to stick with them
for a few days, a few weeks, maybe a few months if you're lucky.
Then you crash and when you crash, you gain all that weight back, and you're frustrated,
and you give up.
If you think about it, this is most of the dieting that goes on today.
I've been able to maintain staying lean ever since losing 30 pounds 12 years ago.
Balance is about figuring out what works so that day in and day out you're able to make
good food choices.
You're able to get out and exercise.
Balance isn't about beating yourself up when you mess up.
Balance isn't about being wildly strict for a few days or even a couple of weeks.
Balance is figuring out what works for you as an individual, and also creating sustainable
lifestyle methods in order to maintain good health, long-term.
Intermittent fasting as your core value, right, that's your core strategy every single day.
Sprinkling in One Meal A Day, one to two times per week, and then taking one day off, like
a Sunday, taking it off completely from intermittent fasting.
Eat your breakfast with your family, eat your three meals, and don't worry about it.
If you are doing something a little bit different, that's okay.
It doesn't make you wrong.
You're doing what's right for you if it's working well.
It's my goal to help our community of Wellness Warriors achieve their health goals and do
it naturally because as I say, true health only comes naturally.
So what I did is I put together a little mini course for you to learn all about One Meal
A Day, how to get started right here.
In that One Meal A Day we're getting a lot of different diversity in our food….