Is The OMAD Diet The New Intermittent Fasting?

For starters, we know that the nutrients in food gives our bodies energy. When you’re hungry, it’s your body’s way of telling you that you need more food to sustain all the various activities and functions that you complete in a day. “One meal a day doesn’t cut it for most people,” and is unnecessarily restrictive, explains Robin Foroutan, MS, RDN, HHC, a registered dietitian in New York City.

One of the many troubling things about the OMAD diet is the idea that you’d have to eat all of your daily recommendations for overall calories and nutrients in one sitting. “It’s likely unpleasant to try and eat all that food in one sitting,” says Kathleen Meehan, MS, RD, LDN, an anti-diet registered dietitian in Houston. “I’d also imagine it’s isolating, as food is meant to be enjoyed socially.” Eating one massive meal can affect your digestion and absorption, Foroutan says. And, when you’ve been fasting all day and teetering on the edge of extreme hunger, it can be harder to make healthy food choices, she adds.

Although you’re technically “allowed to” eat whatever you want during this one meal, you’re still eating way fewer calories (which are units of energy) than you would typically need in a day. Going through the rest of your day without food will not only make you feel sluggish and hungry, but also screw with your body’s cues around hunger, satiety, and satisfaction, Meehan says. This pattern — along with the stringent rules around when you can and can’t eat — could easily harm your relationship to food and eating in the long-term. For people who have a history of disordered eating, this would really be a bad idea to follow the OMAD died, adds Courtney Dunn, MS, RD, CDN, a registered dietitian in San Diego.

Despite these various problems, plenty of people still follow this diet because they think time-restricted eating plans are the way to go. “Our bodies are meant to fast naturally overnight, though not for extreme periods of time such as this,” says Melissa Bailey, MS, RD, LDN, a dietitian in Philadelphia. And although there is intriguing research about the benefits of intermittent fasting, “there’s really no research that tells us that the more restriction the better,” Foroutan says.

What we do know based on research is that most diets are rarely sustainable. Listening to your body for what it needs throughout the day, and nourishing it with well-balanced meals instead of depriving yourself is often your best bet. And hey, when that philosophy becomes a Reddit trend, we’re on-board.