OMAD (one meal a day) and Intermittent Fasting

@nla4625, Megan Ramos is great. You've posted this at a great time because I too have plateaued. I wonder what experience @lisaaase @LeeAase @rjwilliams @lorena1egas @m1rmiller or @johnbishop might have to add.

NLA, have you tried shaking it up and moving your meals times? How is it going?

Thanks for sharing this tip @nla4625. I am currently stuck after doing well reaching my first goal of 220. I felt so good doing the intermittent fasting that I set a new goal of 200 lbs which I haven't seen since high school. I'm mostly doing the 20/4 fasting but my one meal has generally been a little before noon and some fruit, cheese and nuts as fillers to control my hungries. I'm now at 215+ but have been going between 208 to 214. So I will definitely see if this helps me. Thanks again!

Yes...Dr. Jason Fung and Megan Ramos are great resources and it was Dr. Fung that introduced me to fasting. My experience was that alternate day fasting worked really well. Eat dinner every night, but then on alternate days skip both breakfast and lunch. On the eating days, you maintain a 10-12 hour eating window, while on the fasting days you're essentially doing OMAD. That really helped @lisaaase and me. Here's the blog post I did about our experience: http://social-media-university-global.org/2020/02/our-10-week-alternate-daily-fasting-experience/

I think this could make a big difference. Your body is smart, and if it senses consistent nutrient deprivation it can slow down metabolism to prevent starvation. So shaking it up with this alternate daily fast makes a lot of sense.

Let us know how it goes for you!

@colleenyoung. Megan Ramos is in the process of writing a book on women and IF that I'm really looking forward to reading. I watched a couple of interviews on YouTube that she did, and she mentioned two other things that she recommends women stuck on an IF weight loss plateau do. The first had to do with salt intake and electrolytes -- be sure you are taking enough. I never cooked with salt and avoided it like the plague in my life before Keto but am now adding pink salt to everything, including a glass of water. I was worried about not getting enough magnesium, which all the food as medicine health experts I'm reading rave about; so I got some wonderful flavored electrolyte packets from LMNT Elemental Labs that have 1000 mg sodium, 200 mg potassium and 60 mg magnesium. The second thing she recommended for post menopausal women was doing a 36 hour fast once or twice a month to really shake things up. I've actually been waiting for the results of some extensive lab tests I had done to see if I have leaky gut and to identify food allergies, sensitives and toxins before forging ahead. In a previous post, I wrote about functional medicine practitioners believing leaky gut was the root cause of a myriad of diseases ranging from chronic fatigue to depression to IBS. In addition to learning I'm allergic to eggs, of all things, I learned I have no problem with dairy or gluten...but am having leaky gut issues. I was eating several eggs a day so am going to have to change that, for sure. We've started addressing healing my gut, and I'll try these things Megan Ramos recommended. Her Fasting Method organization is having a two week Master Class on IF beginning May 4th, I think...but for the same amount of money I can sign up for a membership for several months on their website, which I think I'll do. I find support from a group, accessible educational materials, and being able to ask experts questions really keep me on track. I have faith the weight will come off; but the real test is I'm feeling better on this eating plan and have more energy and fewer aches and pains. In one of her videos, Megan Ramos said they had worked with over 14,000 people and helped each of them become healthier through IF. Today I learned about Earthing....lots of amazing things to learn about!

Hi Lee - Thanks for your great advice and encouragement. I figured out a new fasting schedule to try; and it's quite similar to yours, ie fast every other day, skip all breakfasts and eat lunch and dinner four days a week. This should shake things up. Regarding how smart our bodies are -- One of the most amazing ideas I've come across in my journey to learn about functional medicine and food as medicine was the importance of detoxing in order to lose fat. Toxins are stored in our bodies in our fat. This particular researcher said our bodies are so smart they won't let us burn fat and release toxins that can harm us, thus it's necessary to get rid of the toxins in order to lose fat. I have no idea if this is true, but it's pretty amazing if it is. All of you on this thread really inspire me! Thanks.

I'm not sure about the not burning fat to avoid releasing toxins but I could imagine a mechanism by which burning fat released toxins and that the presence of toxins could inhibit further fat loss. I think some of these functional medicine theories are going to be difficult to test and prove because unlike clinical trials related to a medication or device there isn't a good funding source for interventions that only involve food or fasting. That's why it's important for individuals experimenting with these approaches to get together and share their experiences and results so we can learn together.

I restarted my nutrition plan after studying the keto continuum method from Dr Boz. I am finding answers in the support group meetings with more than 50 patients with different chronic illnesses that follow this approach. It’s a rigorous keto protocol (similar for epilepsy) that is used to reverse autoimmune conditions https://bozmd.com/