Is One Meal A Day Possible (OMAD)

If you like eating, like all Africans you might be resistant to OMAD (one meal a day) diet plan. An African man who wakes up to go till the land at 5 am every morning must do three meals a day. However, starving didn’t start today. Our ancestors would fish or hunt and sometimes they would come home empty-handed. In such a situation, they would go hungry until their next kill or catch. The lifestyle they lived put them in a situation where they had to starve or they would survive on fruits until their next catch. You are not suffering when you opt for one meal a day, it is even healthier. Whether you lift weights or perform manual labor, one meal a day is still a sustainable diet plan.

Your mind is very elastic, and so can your stomach can shrink if you get used to one meal a day as opposed to three meals. This is something you will get used to when you practice it. For a long time, I have been eating two meals a day. I would skip the lunch because I don’t need it. I can take a milkshake or a yogurt for lunch and I am set. If you take a lunch, you can skip dinner, maybe take an apple or bananas and coffee for dinner and call it a day.

You will start by dropping one meal that you don’t need. The easiest one to drop is lunch if you live in a city or town. Nairobians don’t take lunch and they are just okay. The easiest way to skip lunch is to have breakfast late, let’s say at 11 am. You won’t need lunch if you have your breakfast late. If you feel hungry around 3 pm you can take a vegetable or a boiled egg or a low-calorie beverage like tea.

Now as you get used to two meals a day, you will start getting used to starving or going for long periods without a meal. Your willpower will improve and you shall find yourself able to resist hunger or even not easily feel it.

You will get to one meal a day. You can opt for breakfast or dinner, as for me I prefer dinner if I am going for one meal a day. It works perfectly because let’s say you take a heavy dinner at 8 pm or 9pm. You can go to bed and wake up at 6 or 7 am and get to work or plan your day if you are self-employed. You can work until 11 am when you feel hungry. At this point, you will take a cup of tea or coffee with a fruit or even a vegetable and that is it. You can work until 3 am. At that time, you will also take something, maybe an egg or a small snack. No food yet, something very light to hold you until 8 pm or 9pm when you have a big meal.

You get the gist, right? If you are to go for one meal a day, it has to be a heavy meal that will hold you for hours before your next meal. And it still has to be healthy. If you can afford mashed potatoes and some meat or chicken and good fruits go for them. If you can afford grilled tilapia or pork and some rice with a milkshake, go for it. It is not practical to go for one meal a day and it is something light like ugali and vegetables, that will kill you.

enough to last you 20 hours!

One meal a day is very possible even if you work out. Guys who lift weights feel like they have to eat a lot of food. Not really, you can see bodybuilders who are training for a competition or fitness models who are waiting for a shoot starving a lot. They don’t want to eat food that will cover their abs. It is hard but they manage it just perfectly. In my country, Kenya people like ugali, a very heavy meal full of starch, ugali is made of maize flour and water. If you eat ugali for lunch you can’t take a big meal for dinner.

When I was young and just surviving, around 24 years old, I used to have a very simple diet, it was even weird, I would take ugali or rice and two fried eggs for dinner and sleep. Then I would wake up and look for one tea scone, a banana, and a cup of tea. My next meal would be some fruit around 3 pm and then up to dinner. I was skinny, weighing around 68kgs and standing at 6’0 feet.

At some point, I wanted to get bigger so I changed a lot, I increased my protein intake, ate lots of red meat, fish, and green gams, and started working out extremely hard, lifting weights and practicing power yoga. I can do very intense calisthenics exercises like headstands and handstands. I shoot to over 80kgs of muscle but the interesting thing is that I somehow stuck to one meal a day with light meals in between.

You still have to watch your calorie intake even as you opt for one meal a day. You still can’t indulge in pizzas, burgers, and sodas and get away with it especially as you age and your metabolism slows. The main aim of taking a meal a day is to cut down your calorie intake.

Follow the 80/20 rule of consuming calories. 80 percent of calories you consume should be healthy calories from fruits, vegetables, eggs, white meat, or even red meat at times. The other 20 percent can be from milkshakes, ice creams, pizzas, or sodas which contain empty calories. It’s been over 3 years since I last tasted a pizza, for a soda I can do 6 months or even a year without drinking it. If I take tea it is usually sugarless. I only put a little sugar in my porridge and I don’t drink it often.

 If you doubt whether I am telling the truth, let me tell you that the first time I took a pizza I was 25 years old. I am 32, I have never really fancied fast food. You can also develop such discipline. If you follow a strict diet for years and then try pizza for a month, your body can balloon nicely because it is not used to such a diet. The first time I ate pizza at 25, I continued to indulge in it in the following 8 months and my body got big. I didn’t look fat but my body responded so well to that pizza, I then cut it out completely and only ate once after 3 years, when I was around 29, since then I haven’t eaten it.

There is nothing wrong with pizza though, just take a slice here and there if you really have to. But that’s me I can’t force you on my diet and mindset towards food.

Eating healthy food is like having protected sex, most nutritious foods are not sweet but very good for you. Junk food is like unprotected sex, can be risky but quite sweet. Now the balance is to take a bit of junk once in a month and eat healthy meals 95 percent of the time. And hope the 5 percent junk doesn’t mess you up.

NO FOOD SHAMING

I don’t want to engage in food shaming, calling certain foodstuffs bad, but how do you feel after eating stewed organic chicken compared to how you feel after eating barbecue and a can of Tusker? It is incomparable. Good food makes you feel better. Instead of starting your day with bread and tea, go for sweet potatoes or arrowroots. At $1, you have enough arrow roots for two breakfasts. Anyway, let me not go on for too long with this.

One meal a day can work, but it will take a lot of discipline and willpower. If you try it for two years and work out intensely during that time, you will come out on the other side with a perfect physique. Other animals that hunt, like Lions, can usually go for days before finding a fresh kill. They don’t die easily. In as much as it is possible, it is not for the faint-hearted, that I can say.

All the best.

By Slade Jeff

I am a zen, I love this life plus a lot of wine..I will keep your days filled with interesting content. I am also pro-brands, I tell stories about them at a fair price, let me put in a good word for you. Contact me through japhethsylvester1@gmail.com for business.

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