Healing Through One Meal a Day? Can I Fit in All the Nutrients?

Update on my OMAD Journey

One Meal A Day — OMAD was one of my big goals when it comes to my health. I was born with fibromyalgia, so I always had a high level of inflammation in my body. I changed my diet a few times until I found what seems to work best for me. I arrived at a very organic, slightly ketogenic diet after having tried the vegetarian diet, the vegan diet, and the blood type diet (where you eat certain foods according to your blood type). Nothing felt right, and my fibro didn’t get better but worse.

Today, I am happy to have integrated intermittent fasting. I started with an interval of 12/12 first and worked my way up to 16/8, 16 hours fasting with an eating window of 8 hours. I started in 2018 with my first attempt, and today 16/8 feels very normal, and I don’t like to eat all the time anymore.

My fibro is still present, but today I would say it is only about 20% of what it used to be after incorporating intermittent fasting along with a healthy, organic, protein-heavy diet for the past few years.

But to heal my body properly, I need to go a step further: OMAD.

Why OMAD?

When the human body doesn’t have to digest food all the time, it can spend energy to repair damaged material in the body. It helps fight the ageing process and lowers inflammation levels.

I want to give my body what it needs to heal and repair. “One Meal A Day” sounded very doable for me, and it is and it isn’t. Let me explain.

Currently, I mix intermittent fasting (16/8) with 2–3 OMAD days a week. When I OMAD, I give myself about 2–3 hours to eat. I am supposed to eat about 1,600 calories every day. I am 1.70m and weigh 60kg, but when I OMAD, I might end up only eating maybe 800–1000 calories. I simply cannot stomach so much food at once.

The result; only after one week and 3 OMAD days: I lost weight. I didn’t intend to lose any weight, but it happened. I am already quite lean, and I love my workouts, but when I don’t get enough food in my system, I have less energy for my workouts.

This is a problem that I have to fix!

I will have to adapt some things to be able to get all the nutrients into my body in these few hours of my eating window. I don’t want to lose more weight, so I will buy myself a mixer to make some veggie/fruit shakes, maybe I will look into protein powder and see if I can find organic natural solutions. I know that I cannot stomach these chemical protein powders that are often sold in gyms. I have tried in the past. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

The fasting itself feels very intense but good to me. First, I feel hungry for a few hours. The peak of my hunger feeling is around midday as I normally eat for the first time around 1 pm. But when I get past this point, my hunger just disappears. On my OMAD days, I eat around 4 pm for the first time and stop at the latest 7 pm.

But what I found very interesting is that the muscle aches on my back improved. I felt some muscles that released tension during my extended fasting window.

Let’s see how it goes when I integrate more healthy shakes into my OMAD diet.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. Please do your own research.

If you want to try intermittent fasting or even OMAD, here are some of my tips that were very helpful in my process:

• Make sure that you are not addicted to sugar, caffeine, or alcohol before you start. Ideally, you stay away from processed food, and you already have integrated a quite balanced and healthy, organic diet into your life before starting your fasting journey.
• Start slowly and work with patience. Step by step.
• If you are on any medication, talk to your GP.
• Not everybody should be fasting. Please do your own research.

I will keep on going and give you one update every week. Wish me luck.

Big virtual hug.

Namasté

Alina

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