Eating one meal a day is an extreme version of intermittent fasting, and has potential benefits but also downsides, doctors say
At 75, Bruce Springsteen is still going strong. The Boss played more than 100 shows over the past two years, and he isn't showing any signs of slowing down.
When speaking to British newspaper The Times, Springsteen offered insight into what keeps him going: he is on a one-meal-per-day diet.
The Omad (one meal a day) diet is an extreme form of intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is different from most diets because it is about when you eat, not what you eat.
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Some dieters restrict their calorie intake to eight-hour windows, while others focus on eating all their meals while the sun is still up.
"I'll have a bit of fruit in the morning and then I'll have dinner," Springsteen told The Times. "That has kept me lean and mean."
Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, in the US state of Maryland, studied intermittent fasting for 25 years and said it is similar to how prehistoric humans naturally ate, because they lacked consistent access to food.
"Intermittent fasting contrasts with the normal eating pattern for most Americans, who eat throughout their waking hours," Mattson says. "If someone is eating three meals a day, plus snacks, and they're not exercising, then every time they eat, they're running on those calories and not burning their fat stores."
Time-restricted dieting, such as Omad and intermittent fasting in general, works by allowing the body to burn through its sugar stores and forcing it to burn fat between meals.
Restricting eaters to a single daily meal ensures the longest fat-burning period between calorie intake. It does have potential advantages, including weight loss.
According to Canadian nephrologist and intermittent-fasting expert Dr Jason Fung, eating only one meal a day could be beneficial to people with Type 2 diabetes. By participating in the Omad diet three times a week for a month, a diabetes patient of Fung's no longer needed insulin medication.
"Fasting really impacts weight and sugars, because that's the way calories are stored - as sugar and fat," he told Fox News Digital.
The Omad diet isn't for everyone. According to Healthline, restricting calorie intake too much can potentially do more harm than good.
Having only one meal a day can increase a person's odds of developing hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar), increase their LDL (bad) cholesterol and raise their blood pressure, according to the health news outlet.
"When someone deprives themself of food for 24 hours, they tend to lose control and overeat when it's time to eat again," dietitian Natalie Rizzo, author of The No-Brainer Nutrition Guide For Every Runner, told the website Health.
"This can lead to choosing unhealthy options and eating way more than what feels natural in one sitting."
Eating only one meal a day has also been associated with nausea, dizziness, irritability, low energy and constipation. Brigham and Women's Hospital obesity specialist Dr Caroline Apovian went as far as to say "one meal a day is not a good idea", when asked about the diet by The New York Times.
"If I tell my patients to eat one meal a day, they're going to be starving all day," she added. The obesity specialist also said extreme calorie restriction often leads to overeating.
Should you try the Omad diet? A year-long study found time-restricted dieting in general isn't significantly better for shedding weight than other diets, and eating only one meal a day comes with notable health risks.
Something less extreme, like the Mediterranean diet, might be a better fit for most people.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
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2025-01-22T22:01:11Z