I achieved the bulk of my 80-pound weight loss by simply eating one meal a day (OMAD). I love OMAD. It’s my favorite way to to structure my day. I get more accomplished, I enjoy the food more, and it’s simple to maintain my weight loss when I stick to this simple plan. It got me down to 142 in late 2018, when I decided to stop losing and re-enter maintenance mode.
My goal from that time has been to maintain in the 140s. I continue to weigh daily and practice OMAD or some sort of intermittent fasting most days. From time to time, I get a little too lax and my weight trends up above 150. My rule is that once my weight starts to be consistently above 150, it’s time to go back to Old Reliable: OMAD 6 days a week, cheat day on Sunday, walk 6 miles a day. It always works. I’m a huge fan of sticking with what works. But recently, my weight has creeped up into the low 150s. And instead of going back to Old Reliable, I’m endeavoring to get myself back into the 140s without OMAD.
Why would I do this? The main reason is to prove to myself that I can. On my YouTube channel, I often get asked if I could have lost the weight without OMAD. My answer is that yes, I could have. But I don’t have any real proof to back that up other than my stated belief.
In the past, when I got above 150, I would endeavor for a little bit to not return to OMAD, just to see if I could do it. But I’d get impatient, especially if my weight got to 153. I’d abandon ship, and return to the safety of Old Reliable. Then I’d tell myself that some day I’d give weight loss without OMAD an honest try. Over the past couple of months, my weight has been creeping steadily up. I was hitting some morning weights that I have mentally dubbed the danger zone. If I see a single day weight that is 153 or higher, I get a real sense of urgency about getting back down into the 140s. There was an obvious reason my weight was climbing: my dad was in the ICU and gravely ill. My stress levels were high, and I was simply eating too many calories. Standard protocol would have been to go back to OMAD. Old Reliable to the rescue!
But there was a hitch in the giddyup.
You see, it was Easter Sunday. And in the Orthodox church, Easter is a major feast day. For that day and the 40 days following, we are not supposed to fast at all, with the exception of fasting for Communion. In previous years, this has been a non-issue, because my weight was hanging out in the 140s in Eastertide.
I struggled with the decision at first, but came to the conclusion that it was time to finally do my experiment in earnest. I would endeavor to lose weight, or at the minimum, stop gaining, without fasting at all. Furthermore, I would practice what I preach: I’d have a written plan and goal, a method of tracking, and tweak as necessary.
My Non-Fasting Weight Loss Plan
- Eat whatever I want. No foods are forbidden.
- Don’t fast.
- Don’t stress eat.
- Stay active consistently.
- Weigh daily and keep track of my 7 day average.
Goal: Get back into the 140s.
Implementation
Let’s start with eating. I generally have eaten breakfast and supper. Sometimes I’ll eat something around lunch, sometimes I won’t. Sometimes I’ll have a snack, sometimes I won’t. I try not to go longer than 12 hours without food, since most people would probably say anything longer than that is technically fasting. I’ve weighed every morning, except the few days when I was travelling out of state. I’ve not been walking my 6 miles, but instead I’ve been somewhat consistently swimming 50 laps a day in my pool.
Meanwhile, life has been super stressful. My dad passed away. Many people dear to me have fallen seriously ill. Trying to keep this experiment going, not gaining, and trying to grieve and move on and live life has been, in a word, challenging. I’ve done my best. And today is Ascension, which means that it’s been 40 days since I started this plan. That’s just 2 days shy of the 6-week experiment that I generally recommend to people who are trying to figure out how to lose weight.
If I self-graded myself on consistency with my plan during this time it would look like this:
- Eat whatever I want: A+
- Don’t fast: A (due to later breakfasts on occasion)
- Don’t stress eat: C-
- Stay active consistently: B-
- Weigh daily and keep track of 7 day average: A+ (travelling days are excused absences as far as I’m concerned).
Results
Beginning 7-day average as of 5/5/2024: 152.86
Ending 7-Day average as of 6/13/2024: 151.83
Total lost: 1.03 pounds
So I still haven’t hit my goal. My hope was that I would be in the 140s right now, and I could just go back to OMAD. Had I been less stressed and more active, maybe I would’ve lost more. The question is, should I abandon ship, or keep going? Back in 2017, when I was on Old Reliable, I lost an average of ⅓ of 1 pound per week, which felt so slow. I’m losing even slower with this plan. And truly, with the numbers so small, and the margin you need to consider with weight fluctuations, more time is needed to really confirm that this is a true trend of weight loss. Assuming this is a true loss, at this current pace, it would take me about 12 weeks to get into the 140s. That seems like a really long time.
I wrote a different ending to this article when I originally published it on June 13. I thought I wanted to continue on with the experiment for at least 6 more weeks. I have decided I’m done with this experiment for now. I have two valid reasons. One I won’t discuss on here, at least not yet. It’s a good thing, but it’s a private matter that maybe I’ll discuss in the future at times. Suffice it to say, given that situation, it makes more sense to return to OMAD.
But even if that other situation wasn’t happening, I’d still be calling this audible. Which you can do, by the way, on the weight loss journey, or in maintenance. It is what I tell people constantly. If you find you resent your plan, then change it. Well friends, I found myself resenting needing to interrupt my mornings to eat, even when I wasn’t feeling hungry yet. My mornings felt less productive, which sometimes led to my mornings getting away from me completely. And I’ve found myself being grumpier in general. (Though this is most probably due to grieving and another stressful situation in my life.)
But when to bottom line it, I just love OMAD. That’s really all there is to it. I love it. I miss it. My life functions the best, I function the best, when I practice it.
For the record, my seven-day average is currently 151.46, so in the past 12 days, I’ve dropped another almost half a pound. Had I kept going with this, it’d be reasonable to expect another 9 weeks total until I reached the 140s.
This experiment taught me a lot about myself. It was extremely beneficial regarding getting the self-discipline to not always get seconds. It showed me just how hard it is to eat the right amount of calories for weight loss if you’re eating multiple times a day. And I got a good reminder of just how much patience the weight loss journey takes.
