I am often asked what I eat at my OMAD (One Meal A Day.) I have been eating this way most days of the week for about 10 years now. It was the strategy that helped me go from obese to a normal BMI and maintain in a normal range to the present day. I am always hesitant to make videos about this particular topic. The fact is, some people have strong opinions about what people should eat. I am not one of those people.
I believe that the individual should eat what they like to eat. I’m not a proponent of any particular way of eating. Whether it’s high-protein, high-carb, low-fat, high-fat, as far as I can see, people throughout the world and throughout history have survived and thrived on a huge variety of diets. Some have more meat. Some have more grains. Some, like the Amish, have more pie. It seems like the problems happen when people eat too much food.
My own relationship with food has been difficult. When I was a kid, and until around the time I turned 30, I struggled with my weight. It was my main source of pain. I was made fun of about my weight, and when I became obese, it brought on physical pain as well. Deciding what to eat, what not to eat, and how much to eat made life stressful. When I was obese, I felt a lot of resentment. I just wanted to eat like everybody else.
And in 2016, that’s what I started doing. The change happened for me when I started to pay attention to what people ate. There’s an important difference between what people say they eat and what they actually eat.
By watching people with normal, healthy relationships with food, I was able to allow myself to just eat the food too. Telling myself that I was allowed to eat whatever I wanted was life changing. There’s a popular phrase being used right now: food noise. Well, back when I was obese, I dealt with a lot of food noise. There was a battle raging in my head every time I sat down to eat, or felt like I’d like to eat, which was pretty much all the time. Letting myself just eat the food calmed my food noise. And then I started my YouTube channel.
YouTube has been a tremendous blessing for me. It gives me a creative outlet. It was the catalyst that helped me write my first book, The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting. The revenue helped my family travel full-time in an RV for two years. But more than the money, making videos that have helped people on the weight loss journey has been incredibly meaningful work.
But being a YouTuber has also added a layer of complexity to my own weight loss journey. I feel quite a lot of pressure not to mess it up. I strive to live my life as if I do not have a YouTube channel. I have taken breaks from YouTube for the very purpose of seeing if I would act and eat differently. (I found that I don’t.) I try to make helpful content.
But I have a hard time making content on precisely what to eat. One reason is the one I mentioned earlier: humans across different cultures and throughout generations have enjoyed good health on a very wide variety of diets. I believe humans are very, very flexible. I’m extremely skeptical of anyone who says otherwise.
The bigger reason, however, is the Hawthorne effect. People, including me, change their behavior when they know they are being observed. Whenever I try to think about making a video of some example OMADs, I inevitably start thinking, well, I should make sure I put some vegetables in there. Or I should take it easier on the ranch. And then, when I try to course correct, I can end up going heavier on those things that people might criticize as being unhealthy.
A case in point is the photo at the top of this post. I got the idea that I should take a photo of my OMAD, but I made the decision before I fixed the sandwich or made my salad. This OMAD was for date night. It was delicious. If you can’t tell, it’s a fried chicken sandwich with a salad and a glass of wine. The chicken in that fried chicken sandwich was a breaded boneless, skinless thigh. There was mayo on the bun, both sides. There was a generous amount of lettuce and tomato in the sandwich. The salad had lettuce, tomato, cheese, croutons, and homemade ranch dressing. And while I could practically drink ranch dressing because I love it so much, I added more ranch than I would usually eat, but not by much. How do I know this? Because as I was eating that salad, I thought, hm, this is just a little too ranch dressing-y. Also, not pictured: four pieces of Dove Dark chocolate.
You know that phrase, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time?” I feel like when it comes to food it’s more like “you can’t please any of the people any of the time.” I know everybody probably has opinions about that meal. The keto people would tell me I should get rid of the bun and the croutons. The low-fat people would tell me I should take away the ranch dressing, cheese, mayo, and the deep-fried chicken. Teetotalers, of course, would tell me to ditch the wine. And the carnivores would tell me to get rid of everything else. If I listened to them, I’d starve to death.
This is why I don’t post my meals on the regular. It would absolutely lead to a lot of overthinking and stress. A return of food noise. And truly, I do fear it would cause weight gain. This is why I choose not to post this type of content very often.
That said, I have been told by some that they find pictures like this very helpful, and that it has helped them start healing their own relationship with food. So, I will post content like this from time to time. But I hope when I do, you understand that most likely you’re getting a distorted picture no matter how much I try to make it as realistic as possible. And even then, it’s just a snapshot. We go through phases in what we cook. Sometimes we’ve got a lot of beans and rice. Other times, there’s lasagna and chicken Caesar salads.
To paraphrase Ricky Nelson, when it comes to what I eat, I can’t please everyone, so I’ve got to please myself.
Link to ranch dressing recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16131/ranch-dressing-ii/
