One Meal A Day – My Visit To The Reddit

So, I was browsing around and trying to find more articles and other methods of Intermittent Fasting, and I discovered a lovely community on the website Reddit ( for those of you unfamiliar, Reddit is basically a HUGE website with a ton of sections dedicated to different topics).

The community has existed for around 2 years now and exists specifically as a place for people to talk about a one meal a day approach to Reddit. If they’re following typical Intermittent Fasting protocol – this means that they’ll probably be fasting for around 24 hours a day, every day.

Then, to add to the extremeness, they will try and fit all their necessary calories into one meal.

Whoa!

I hope I don’t sound judgmental, because I’m not. Not at all. I’m impressed and awed at the fortitude to fast for 24 hours, and the ingenuity to fit all their daily caloric needs into a single meal. It’s basically a more extreme version of the intermittent fasting that I do. Except where I have a window to eat whatever I want, they’ve distilled it down to a SINGLE MEAL.

SOOOO interesting!

Anyway, I decided to do a deep dive into the method so that I might be able to help some of my readers who want to take a similar 24 hour approach (although I recommend checking out the Reddit yourself as well).

“What OMAD does NOT mean – 1.) Healthy food choices only. 2.) You can tell other OMADers what they should or should not eat.”

Following this message pinned as their most recent PSA, it seems that the one meal a day Reddit, henceforth referred to as “Omad” in this post, allows people to eat junk food during their one meal, and looks down on others that would try to shame such people.

I’m all for this, and even mentioned in my diet plan that I do indulge myself with Pop-tarts here and there, but the main caveat is that it needs to fit into your daily nutritional requirements. If you’re doing intermittent fasting on a 16/8 schedule, or a 24 hour fast, or whatever method you pick – at the end of the day, if you’re going over your caloric needs, you’re going to be putting on pounds. Sometimes that’s the goal, for example, when bulking.

But if you’re trying to lose weight, you better keep that in mind. People like to argue about how much your diet makeup matters – 100 calories of lettuce vs 100 calories of candy. But no one is arguing that you can eat more calories than you need and lose weight. And if you’re taking issue with me eating Pop-tarts, make sure you check out my results before hating.

So already I’m liking this community. The fact that they are open to being flexible with nutrition is encouraging and, in my opinion, important. A lot of people snap back to their old diets when they make too many changes to their current ones. Cleaning up a little bit is one thing, but cleaning up into plainer natural foods, and working with a new eating schedule? Some people will adjust easier than others.

Here are some results from one of the top posts on the one meal a day reddit. The user’s username was bobbytouchey88.

“I have two pics in my profile you can check.. one is a home meal, other is a work on the go meal. I try to aim for 2k cals so I average 1800-2200. Home meals are (in order) veggies , oils, meats, nuts, cheese. Work meals are pretty much just meats and a pack of nuts.”

Note how he’s keeping track of his calories. And, for those of you messaging me about your busy schedules…

“Work 50-60hrs a week on my feet. [..]This is my first great success and I definitely attribute it solely to OMADs/fasting affect on hormones and other benefits. Nothing else changed.”

Wow!

Now, I’m not going to say that because this guy did it, anyone else can do it. I don’t know your personal situations. But I do know that anyone else can draw inspiration from the success of others, male or female (Although I’ve compiled a few of the successes of women on my post here).

So enjoy! I think it’s good to keep track of the way other people utilize similar methods. If we’re all on intermittent fasting, we might as well see what sort of variations people are finding the most success with. Then we can try it out and see what our bodies mesh the best with. If you want to try this style of dieting, definitely go to the subreddit and see what’s going on. If you’re more interested in my 8 hour window of fasting, check out this page.