I followed one meal a day successfully for over seven years and you always ask me what do I eat
while following one meal a day so today I’m going to break down exactly what I’m eating
for my one meal so I can make it really simple for you. So, let's get started but before we do,
I’m Dr. Nick Zyrowski and I started my holistic health practice in order to help
you take control of your health naturally because true health only comes naturally.
I also want to mention I started a brand-new community for the wellness warriors. If you
want to join the wellness warrior community text this number right here and you're in.
When I first started doing OMAD quite frankly it wasn't even popular nobody even knew what it was
and if you were doing it you were probably some type of weirdo, but now it's become wildly popular
and the bad part is there's a lot of bad advice that is surrounding this topic. There was this
individual I was taking care of and you know they probably told me, “Hey, I’m doing one meal a day
and it's working out so great” and they started explaining to me how they do it they said the
best part about it is I can eat whatever I want and I can still lose weight. I was like, “Whoa,
hold up. Eat whatever you want? What are you talking about?” “Oh yeah, you can eat pizza on it,
you can drink soda, you can eat a lot of dessert. You can eat whatever you want and you can still
lose weight. And I was like just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should
because here's a question I have for you: Skinny people still get cancer don't they? Using one meal
a day as a crutch for a poor diet is always a bad idea. Many internet publications and
different influencers have taught that you can eat a poor-quality diet and it's still
following proper method, proper protocol. I always teach people that eating healthy
is far more important than implementing an intermittent fasting strategy. You have to
learn how to eat properly first before doing OMAD if you want to have good success with it.
With one meal a day, it's also important to make sure that you're eating proper calories.
I get dozens of messages from people that say I love one meal a day because it allows me
to cut my calories really low. It’s important to realize that one meal a day
is a strategy in which you’re compressing your eating window. It is not a starvation
technique. There was one lady I was working with and she was so proud of how she was doing on OMAD
and the problem that she was facing is that she hit a weight loss plateau
and this was one of the reasons she was seeking me out. When I looked at her calories and what
she was actually eating on OMAD, she was all the way down to 900 calories a day and she had been
eating like that for almost two months. What she had successfully done is crushed her metabolism.
It's so important to make sure that you’re dialing the proper amount of calories that you need and
then stick with it and I’ll show you exactly how I’m doing it here in just a moment. But one of the
ways that you can think about it is if you eat too much you'll gain weight; if you eat the correct
amount you'll stay at the same weight; if you go in a small calorie deficit you'll lose weight;
if you go on a huge calorie deficit for a long period of time you'll crush your metabolism.
Let me take you through my day start to finish so you can truly understand the process. Today,
I woke up at 5am, got my workout in. Working out is just very important for me so I always
like to get that in first thing in the morning. Now, as far as what I consumed,
I did lots of water and also electrolytes. The electrolytes that I use are by Celarity.
It's Electrolyte +. If you're somebody who's following a low carb diet and also doing fasting,
then you will likely 100% need electrolytes if you're combining that with good exercise.
Now I’ll put a link to this one in the description that I use. It's a good balanced one that not only
helps with exercise performance, but also gives you that proper hydration.
After this, I typically just go on throughout my day making sure I get proper hydration. Once
again, it's very easy if you're busy throughout the day that you can fall
into this category that because you're not eating you also don't drink enough water.
It's very easy to become dehydrated. I’ve done that multiple times I’m very physically active
so therefore it's a big problem for me and I typically get a good reminder
that I did this when I wake up in the middle of the night with a splitting migraine.
Throughout the day I typically drink about two half a cup of coffee.
Coffee can not only give you a little bit of boost mentally and just physically,
but the other thing that coffee can do for you is it can help blunt hunger if you’re
somebody's getting a little bit of hunger pains throughout the day. Beyond that the only other
thing I typically will use is sparkling water. That works really good too to help
you feel satiated if you're getting a little bit of cravings throughout the day.
When formulating your meal plan, it’s so important to make sure that we get good diversity within our
food. Let’s face it. Many of us are creatures of habit and as a creature of habit we tend to
pattern our meals and we eat the same thing day in and day out and I get why we're just trying to
simplify this whole process but we want to make sure that we have diversity within our meals.
We got lots of leafy greens. We want to make sure that we're getting the proper vitamins, nutrients,
minerals that we need in order to have a good healthy body. The other thing we want to do is
make sure that we’re eating healthy whole food. This is very important. I had one lady who came
to me and she was like you know what my biggest struggle with one meal a day is the cravings I
get. It's so bad and then I just want to give up. Well when I looked at the foods that she was
eating it happened to be a lot of carbohydrates and a lot of sugar and a lot of, of course, not so
healthy foods beyond that. Well the problem here with her in particular is that she was getting
symptoms of hypoglycemia because she was blasting her blood sugar so high during her meals with all
the sugar she was eating that when she was in that fasted state she was coming down off it and
dipping into hypoglycemia and getting dizziness and shaking and of course not feeling well at all.
The other thing that we have to be aware of is this many of us are doing one meal a day
because we want to use it as a health strategy. We're not doing it because we
couldn’t think of any other way to eat. Most of us are trying to lose fat maintain muscle,
but also use it as a way to keep us healthy day in and day out. What we want to make sure
that we're doing if we want these good results is that we have to cut sugar pretty much down
to nothing. We want to go as close to sugar-free as possible because fact is,
is that you can't burn fat for energy and burn sugar for energy at the same time. We
have to pick one. If we want to burn fat for energy, we have to ditch the sugar.
So, let's go ahead and break down today the exact foods I’m going to eat so you can get a true
understanding of this. First, I’m going to start off with steak fajitas. Now the steak fajitas
is going to be the main portion of my meal I have about a thousand calories here. My goal
is to hit 2200 calories today. In these steak fajitas, we got avocado so we got a good fat;
there's steak so we got protein in there; there's cheese and there’s also veggies. These wraps that
I’m using are specifically designed to be low carb wraps so there's hardly any carbohydrates
in this particular part of the meal. Moving on we have some cauliflower rice which is going to be
sautéed in butter, lots of good spices in it. I have a salad. We have lots of diversity
with the greens - we have some spinach in here, we have cucumbers, we have carrots,
also there's romaine lettuce in there as well. On top it's topped with some cheese crisp. Now,
as far as dressing, I am using a Primal Kitchen Green Goodness avocado oil dressing. The Primal
Kitchen is always a safe way to go if you want a little bit of diversity in your dressing.
Over here is I have a bone broth-based soup. This is a chicken tortilla soup. It also is topped
with cheese. And then over here I have some keto pumpkin bars. Now I know what you're thinking.
How does he expect me to eat like this? I don't have hours to spend in the kitchen.
Truth is, this is not hours in the kitchen. A lot of this is leftovers. This was put together today
okay to have a nice fresh salad and these were put together today. What you're going
to find when eating healthy you're cooking your own meals when you're cooking your own
meals you're always going to have leftovers so you're able to kind of just make a little bit
of a hodgepodge of a meal, throw it together, and eat really good and eat really healthy.
Now my goal here is to eat high fat, moderate protein, and low carbohydrate.
My goal isn't necessarily to eat a ketogenic diet here. That's not my concern at this point in my
life. It's not that you should or you shouldn't - it's just really about how you feel comfortable.
Overall, I’m hitting like I said 2200 calories. I am putting myself in a little bit of a calorie
deficit right now. If I was hitting my normal calories, I’d be somewhere right around like
probably 2600 calories in order to hit basically maintenance calories for me.
We have to realize that even though we're eating one meal it is possible that we could overeat
and if we're overeating on one meal a day, we still won't lose weight. We want to make sure
as I mentioned before we aren't under eating in a huge way for a long period of time. We aren't over
eating - we want to be hitting maintenance calories or coming in at a small deficit to
help us lose a little bit of fat lean up a little bit if that's what we're trying to accomplish.
As far as these meals go it's very important for them to be healthy and I think that this style
of eating gives you a greater appreciation for food. Many people graze all day long and they just
don't even think about the foods they're eating they just constantly shove foods in their mouth,
but when you're eating one meal a day and you eat slow and you really just slow down,
appreciate the flavors and appreciate the food that you're eating, you build a better
relationship with food, and a lot of people have a very poor relationship with food which is why
they have a problem with being overweight, why they have a problem with binge eating
foods they shouldn't be eating. We have to make sure that we have good psychology around food.
The other thing I want to mention is that with this meal this will typically stretch
out maybe over an hour and a half, two-hour period. I’m going to fast for 22 hours,
eat all of my meals within a two-hour period.
Now if you want to learn more about the exact food pyramid that I follow
when it comes to doing OMAD, watch this video right here. We're talking about
the one meal a day food plan. Based on our comments and questions that we get here,
I can see that a lot of people are really struggling with this and people need a
little bit more in-depth information so that's what we're going to cover today.