Hi! So I’ve been OMAD, or one meal a day, 5 or 6 days a week. My eating window is compressed to about 1-2 hours during those days and maybe 6 hours on the non-OMAD days. I’ve done well and busted through a huge stall. I started OMAD in September and have lost about 30 of my 50 pounds since then. It worked great...until it didn’t. I had a scan and have only lost less than 1 pound of muscle and the rest had come from fat and my metabolism is running well, but the scales have only moved down by about .2 in two months. I should also mention that I started resistance trying around the same time that the scales stopped.

I’ve read that some doctors are saying that OMAD works better if you’re closer to goal because your body will adjust. Also, it will slow the metabolism down. I’ve read others who have used it all the way to goal. So, maybe my body has adjusted or, like Dr. Phinney and Dr. Hall say, maybe this is just a time where my body is trying to become weight stable, having lost more than 10% of my body weight in the last 6 months. In one of their plateau talks, they suggested considering if you’ve lost more than 10% of your body weight in the last 6 months, that the body will often stabilize for a few months before it drops more.

Maybe a coincidence, but Spring is here and I’ve had to start taking more Allegra than my normal maintenance dose. 🧐

Any thoughts? Has my body adapted or is it just taking a break and trying to stabilize? Maybe my immune system is fighting me because of seasonal allergies? I was previously losing about 2 pounds a month and I seriously doubt I’ve put that on in muscle in the past two months. It’s really hard to gain even 1 pound of muscle a month, right?

Hoping some of you out there can chime in with some ideas...

That's a long time doing the same protocol...your body can adjust to anything...if you exercise the same way for the same time, fast the same amount of time ... but repeating OMAD is especially discouraged because your body can adapt easily to it as a form of calorie restriction.



I posted IDM's long complete answer to why OMAD is not used in weight loss (maintenance OK) protocols in this previous post:

https://forum.lowcarber.org/showpos...&postcount=1144

Thank you! I’ll check that out. I just hoped that since it keeps my insulin level low, that it would heal my metabolism and then my body would do what it’s supposed to do, it would find a healthy weight. I want to find a lifestyle that I can continue even in maintenance. I’ve been around this forum for about 10 years...losing the same 10 pounds over and over again. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you have to continue to do what you did to lose weight...for the rest of your life. Otherwise, 2 years pass and then you return weighing more than when you first joined. That’s been my experience too. Anytime I’ve thought I could eat even remotely close to the SAD, even in moderation, I’d be up 10 pounds in two months and back to square one again. I really believed this OMAD was the answer to my prayers. 😣 Turns out that for some of us, there’s no magic formula. Just trial and error and lots of educating ourselves.

Ideas to change from OMAD would be to check all the different moderator created weekly protocols on the OCN FB page and change it up. More recent advice from OCN here: https://forum.lowcarber.org/showpos...&postcount=1166

Stumbled on this video this morning....St Luke's Hospital in KC (nationally ranked in cardiology) on benefits of FASTING! It's really Time Restricted Eating of less than 24 hours, but OMG, a cardiologist, James O'Keefe MD talking about the benefits of fasting and letting your metabolism rest. What about the decades of advice to "boost your metabolism" and eat 6 times a day!
Wonders never cease.

https://www.facebook.com/saintlukes...37281810348146/

My understa nding is that OMAD is a 24hour fast. Otherwise perhaps using carnatine would help. Mobilizes fat. Found as a supplment and in beef.

I'd second the idea that your body will adapt to anything if you do it consistently. Part of this adaptation is going to be a slowing of your metabolism if you're restricting calories, which inevitably you are if you're losing weight. One of the advantages of fasting and feasting cycles that change up is that it keeps your body guessing so it doesn't adapt to the lower overall calorie intake.

On top of this your RMR may drop because you are smaller. Your RMR at 235 lbs. might have been about 1677 and at 205 lbs. might be about 1537--without the effects of calorie restriction. (NOTE: I got these numbers from a pretty reliable calculator, but it's just an example.)

It may also be possible to boost your RMR through fasting and feasting cycles. This hasn't been clinically tested, but there are some people around on the internet and IDM who are experimenting with it. The idea is that you eat well over your TDEE (RMR + energy expenditure) for a couple of days and then fast completely for a day or more. You lose weight because your total calorie intake over the cycle is under what your body needs to maintain. But you're training your body to think that it's going to get lots of calories, so it starts burning at that rate (there is clinical evidence that RMR increases when you over-feed human subjects).

I don't want to give the impression that this is some kind of fancy CICO argument. It is true that to lose weight you need to be taking in fewer calories than you're using, no matter what you're eating. We also know that what you're eating makes a difference to how your body processes food and losing weight. The idea with this is that when you eat what you're eating also makes a difference.

Free2BeMe, you made a big difference changing your when to OMAD. Now, maybe you need a different when, or how much, or both. You could continue OMAD and drop quantity. Or switch to a different or varying pattern and possibly maintain quantity. Or switch to a different eating pattern and experiment with increasing quantity.

When are you eating your OMAD F2BM?

Brandy has written on the Fung thread that she wants to eat dinner with her family. Like her, I find skipping breafkfast and lunch no one will notice, but to skip dinner, that is anti-social. Little kids watching your eating habits is a hard one.
One tip was to have broth in a bowl, sprinkle something green on top of it, eat slowly with a spoon. Miso!

Thank you all! I think this plateau has been good for me. I’m having to look at my habits more carefully and consider if maybe I’ve grown slack. I’ve been watching Dr. Westman’s videos the takeaway has been that I need clean things up and start tracking better. I’ve also decided to do a two week refeed, all clean low carb, of course. I’ve been focusing on muscle gains recently and maybe I’m stressing my body out. I’ll go back to two meals a day, but track more carefully. I may change things up again in a month or so and go back to OMAD.

One interesting thing I noticed in all my frantic searching was just how common plateaus are, regardless of your plan. Also, many people experience the long plateaus at the midpoint, so it’s not uncommon at all. I’m just going to remember that even if I never lose another pound, I have to eat low carb for the rest of my life. Period. So whether the scales move or not is kind of irrelevant, I guess. Still, it’s painful to be stuck so close to 199!!

I ate low carb with a limit of 50 and lost easily and well... until I got down to the last 15 pounds. Losing that now, but it took Atkins Induction levels of carbs.

Plus, I'm (cough cough) older now I might have to stay this low moving forward. Or I could feel well enough to start exercising, and be able to raise that. I don't know.

I know my years of yo-yo dieting "trained" my body to expect periodic famines and that can encourage it to hang onto fat. Also, even though I am Very Low Carb, I fluctuate my intake. I might have a day that bounces up to 25 or even 30! And some days I go mostly meat and land around 5.

Brandy you WILL break 200, reaching 199 is uplifting!!

I think I’ve similarly trained my body to expect famine. I starved myself on a low-fat, high carb diet for years...and I gained or maintained. Some people can lose like that if they don’t mind being vigilant and ravenously hungry, but it only worked to take off 5 pounds, at the most or maintain, if I was active. So, I’m trying to build muscle and improve my metabolism. That will have to be my focus for now.

Thank you!! ❤️ I’m starting to believe I will too...eventually. 😂 I just need to keep my head on straight and focus on nutrition and health and balance until that time comes. It’s about the journey, isn’t it? “Progress, not perfection” “trust the process” and all that jazz. 😊 If I start feeling too discouraged, I’m likely to binge and then sadly, punish myself through extreme calorie restriction and crazy exercise routines. I need to keep myself heathy mentally.

But I’m convinced more than ever that the answer for me doesn’t lie in prolonged fasting, at least when I still feel sort of nutritionally deficient from babies and years of dieting. But I’m sure I will go back to alternate days of fasting again. I felt great doing that for about the first 6 months. September-February. March was stressful and is for most families in Japan, so dieting seemed to keep me on edge and extra irritable. For now, two meals a day with no limits on low carb veggies and lean meats, slight limit on fattier cuts.

I’ll revive this thread when I know how these changes affect me. I’m sure I’m not the only one dealing with these issues. For those who don’t know me, I’m 38, a mom of three kids, mild thyroid issue, which I’m treated for. Years of dieting with severe calorie restriction. I hope this experiment will be helpful for others out there. 💜

There was a discussion at the support meeting about what to do when not losing weight (comes up every time ). Stress, other factors of lifestyle are often mentioned. The moderator said she had not lost any weight last year, but this year has already lost 10 pounds without changing a thing. What's different? Last January she gave up smoking and it is possible that her body took a year to heal. It could have been the method she used, or the healing/cleaning the lungs do, but her body was focused on another function for while. As you think, maybe your body has been repairing nutrient deficiencies, or thyroid. Sometime Plateaus when still eating healthy on plan foods just happen....so very common as you found out when searching for ideas.