Can you eat one meal a day keto style and still get the same benefits? Does it work and more importantly is it healthy? By the end of this article you’ll find it out.

The OMAD Diet

One meal a day (OMAD) is a nutritional strategy that involves eating only once during the 24-hour cycle. Although it can be effectively used for fat loss, it’s not necessarily a diet but a life-style plan.

OMAD is based on intermittent fasting (IF), which is a tool for dissecting your day into 2 periods:

Feeding window – the time period during which you consume calories and now they’re circulating the blood stream. On IF this period is limited usually somewhere between 2-8 hours.

– the time period during which you consume calories and now they’re circulating the blood stream. On IF this period is limited usually somewhere between 2-8 hours. Fasting window – the time period during which you abstain from consuming any calories which puts you into a fasted state. This makes up the majority of the day.

The OMAD diet takes IF to its daily maximum capacity and pushes your fasting window until 22-23 hours and limits the eating phase to 1-2 hours, or just one meal a day.

How Does This Work

While fasting, our body goes through a series of profound and immensely advantageous physiological adaptations, which make our body start burning more fat for fuel. This state is called ‘ketosis.’

When in a state of nutritional ketosis, your body has shifted from using glucose (carbohydrates) as its primary fuel source into supplying virtually all of its energy demands with ketone bodies and free fatty acids (FFAs).

Nutritional ketosis is an altered, but still natural, metabolic state that occurs either over a prolonged period of fasting or by restricting carbohydrate intake significantly, usually up to less than 50 grams per day [i].

After an overnight’s fast, your liver glycogen stores will be empty and you’re already in mild ketosis. This ramps up your body’s inner energy production and triggers some immense fat burning. That’s why intermittent fasting and keto work so well together – they’re like a match made in heaven.

Keto-Adaptation VS Nutritional Ketosis

However, although you’ll have one foot in the door of ketosis after fasting for 14-16 hours, it doesn’t mean that you’re keto-adapted by any means.

There are many ideas about which is which but the general difference is:

Nutritional ketosis is characterized by serum blood ketones of 0.5 mMol-s and above . The optimal zone is between 0.5 and 3.0 mMol-s. But it doesn’t mean you’ll be utilizing them efficiently.

. The optimal zone is between 0.5 and 3.0 mMol-s. But it doesn’t mean you’ll be utilizing them efficiently. Keto-Adaptation refers to the body’s ability to use FFAs and ketones as fuel extremely effectively. This takes a longer period of time for some of the liver enzymes and hormones to change.

That’s why you would have to follow a ketogenic diet as well, if you were to actually start using those ketones.

The difference between burning sugar and ketones:

Glucose metabolism is quick and gives us instant energy. It also produces free radicals that speed up aging and make you bonk mentally.

Fatty acid metabolism produces ketone bodies that give us 25% more energy that lasts for several hours. There aren’t any dangerous by-products either because it’s clean fuel.

One Meal a Day Keto

Keto-adaptation takes usually about 2-3 weeks of eating very low carb. The macronutrient ratios on a well-formulated ketogenic diet are: 70-80% fat (a boatload), 15-25% protein (moderate) and <5% carbs (approximately 30-50g NET, without the fiber included).

When you’re eating only one meal a day then you’ll be consuming roughly 2000 calories at once or within the course of a few hours. This may your blood sugar and insulin levels to rise due to the massive rush of nutrients that enter digestion.

It takes as little as 5 grams of glucose to cause a blood sugar response. This will hinder keto-adaptation because the body recognizes the presence of easily accessible energy (sugar) and won’t make the effort to produce ketones.

So, if you were to eat only one meal a day on keto, would you get kicked out of ketosis if you eat roughly 2000 calories per one meal? Not necessarily.

This is significant only during the first few weeks of keto-adaptation. If your metabolic engine is still geared towards burning glucose then it will take any opportunity it can get to stay there. To shift into ultimate ketosis, you would have to adjust into it by mimicking the physiology of fasting as much as possible.

OMAD KETO Diet

That’s why you would want to follow a period of low carb ketogenic eating prior to starting OMAD on keto. The length of it depends on your personal condition, your history, the state of your health and your individual carbohydrate tolerance.

Eating one meal a day on keto is actually the best way to do it because it keeps your body in it’s prime-primal state 24/7. Fasting is incredibly easy once you become fat-adapted because all of the energy you need will be readily accessible from your own adipose tissue. IF on Keto is the safest and easiest way to lose fat, improve your energy levels and not feel hungry at all.

The key to making it successful and sustainable is in knowing how the physiology of it all works and how to implement it according to your own routine. This can be achieved by learning about this topic and self-experimentation.

That’s why I recommend you to check out my KETO // IF program. It teaches you how fasting ketosis works and how you can put it to use in your daily life. One meal a day on the ketogenic diet is the best way to do it and leads to the optimization of your own biology.