One Meal a Day Explained Hour by Hour - When Fat Burning Starts, When Muscle Loss Begins, and Why OMAD Stops Working for So Many People With Ben Azadi | #1267

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One meal a day works

until it doesn't.

It can flatten your belly,

kill cravings, and sharpen your focus.

And then out of nowhere fat loss stalls,

sleep changes, and strength drops.

And most people never connect it to omad

because it feels amazing at first.

So what actually happens inside of your body

over 24 hours when you eat once?

When does fat burning really start?

When does muscle risk begin?

And at what hour does it quietly shift

from powerful to problematic?

Let's walk the clock hour by hour.

So you just ate your one meal.

Here's what happens immediately.

Insulin rises.

Insulin is the only fat storage hormone inside of your body.

Yeah, you have over a 600 hormones,

but insulin is the only one that signals fat storage.

Insulin does more than just that.

It's what's considered an energy sensor.

But no matter how clean your meal is,

insulin goes up protein.

Stimulates insulin.

Of course, carbohydrates really stimulate insulin.

And even certain amino acids can trigger it.

It's not a bad thing.

I'm just giving you basic biology here.

Insulin's job or one of insulin's job

is to shuttle nutrients where they belong.

You see, it's an energy sensor.

Think of insulin as a lock to your fat cells.

When insulin is high,

that door to your fat cells, it's closed.

It's locked.

You're in fat storage mode.

Insulin is up.

You're storing fat.

Insulin is down.

You're burning fat.

Very simple.

Now, your body has amazing processes.

You have backup reserves.

These are called your glycogen stores.

And you have these energy reserves,

calorie reserves, sugar reserves,

carb reserves, whatever you want to call them.

It's all the same thing.

These are reserves in your liver and in your muscle cells.

You see, you store energy there.

A typical adult can store about 80 to 100 grams

of carbohydrates in the liver.

And depending on the size and how much muscle mass you have,

around 300 to 500 grams of sugar,

carbohydrates, energy in the muscle cells.

So when you finish that last meal,

during this window, fat burning is paused

because you are digesting that food.

You've spiking insulin and you're storing energy.

This is where glucose is prioritized.

This is also depending on how much protein

you had at that meal.

At least 30 grams of this stimulates muscle protein synthesis.

And that part matters.

We'll come back to the muscle protein synthesis part

a little bit later.

But keep that in mind.

It's very important.

Now, right now, after the meal, nothing dramatic.

Normal digestion.

You feel full?

Calm?

Satisfied.

Now, six to 12 hours after that last meal,

here is where the friction starts.

Insulin spiked right after the meal and it dropped back down.

Now, your body is using your sugar reserves,

your glycogen stores as fuel.

And so blood sugar stabilizes.

Insulin continues to fall hour by hour.

These are all great things.

But something else happens.

You have a hunger hormone called ghrelin.

I always consider ghrelin like a gremlin.

It comes around.

It's ugly.

It doesn't.

It's not fun to be around.

It's company similar to the hunger hormone.

Grelin, it's not fun.

It makes noise.

It's like, get out of here, buddy.

Well, this rises about six to 10 hours to 12 hours

after your last meal.

So this is where you have the hunger wave.

And this is where most people quit omad

because they feel hungry.

I can't do this.

Now, this sucks.

Not because omad is not working,

but because their insulin and blood sugar

isn't stable yet.

They're not what I call fat adapted.

They're still sugar burners.

And most people at this point think they're starving.

But they're actually not.

They're simply switching fuel sources.

They're training their metabolism to stop burning sugar

and start burning fat.

But here is the big problem for most people.

If you are metabolically inflexible,

then guess what study show 93% of Americans are?

This means your metabolism is only burning sugar.

Glucose.

It doesn't know how to burn any other substrate.

Just sugar.

This phase feels brutal.

You're going to feel irritable, hungry, and angry.

Have you ever seen the Snickers commercial

or it says you're not yourself when you're hungry?

Have our Snickers, right?

That's kind of what's happening,

but don't have a Snickers.

You're going to feel foggy.

You're going to crave sugar like the Snickers.

You're going to feel restless

and your energy is going to drop

because you're burning through your glycogen stores.

And you don't know how to burn fat.

At least not yet.

Now, human data shows the hunger hormone

grueling rises in predictable waves during fasting.

This is really important because

all hormones inside of your body,

write this down as a note.

Remember, it created a brain tattoo.

Every single hormone in your body

is what's considered pulsatile.

They go up.

They go down.

They go up.

It kind of goes in waves,

including the hunger hormone.

It spikes in false.

And you have trained your metabolism

and trained your body to produce grueling

at the times you're used to eating.

7 30 AM, 9 30 AM,

12 PM, 2 PM, 5 PM, 8 PM.

You've trained the...

So that's what's going to happen.

Studies back this up.

But here's the thing.

You could ride the hunger wave.

It'll pass.

Distract yourself.

Go outside.

Hop on a sales call.

I don't know what it is,

but 10, 15 minutes later,

that hormone grueling begins to drop.

What makes this a lot easier

is stable levels of insulin.

That is the key.

This is where most people fail

with one meal a day protocols.

Not necessarily because they lack willpower

or discipline,

but because their insulin isn't stable yet.

They're practicing too much fasting

and they haven't done the groundwork

to stabilize insulin.

So if you're white-neckling hunger

at hour eight,

or if your energy crash is hard,

you're fighting unstable glucose.

This is why what I tell all my students to do

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during fasting phases.

Human trials show that burbrin

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Lowers fasting glucose

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which is a key metabolic switch

to burning fat instead of sugar.

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who struggle with hunger and appetite

and cravings during a fast,

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So you could continue with your fast.

Translation, it smooths the transition

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Now let's continue to what's happening

between hours 12 and 16.

This is the fat unlock phase.

I want everybody to get to this phase.

You see insulin is going to continue to drop here.

Because of that, your body is now burning through

all of the sugar in your liver and muscle cells.

And depending on where you're at with your metabolic journey here,

you could already begin to shift into burning fat for fuel.

Belly fat, love handles, visceral fat.

And when you do that, you start breaking down fat for energy,

which is the key here.

The fatty acids that are now being used for energy

are shuttled that are sent to your liver.

Your liver uses that as a fuel source

and then your liver reduces ketones.

You've heard of the keto diet.

What you have not heard before is that keto is not a diet.

Keto is a metabolic process.

And there's nothing new about keto.

It's just nuanced or new to some people.

Every single one of our ancestors did keto.

Did you know that?

When you are producing ketones, you are burning fat.

Easy peasy for you to understand this.

And this could happen within 16 hours of the fast.

When this happens, brain clarity improves.

You trigger one of my favorite benefits to fast

thing called energy diversion.

Oh, have you heard of this benefit?

It's incredible.

Look, it takes a lot of energy to digest food.

Blood flow bandwidth resources.

It takes a lot.

The last time you feasted was your first thought,

I'm so focused and energized.

Let's go get some work done.

No, the last time you feasted,

you went on the couch, became a couch potato, and you were done.

14 to 16 hours into a fast.

You've completed digestion.

You trigger energy diversion.

We're now the energy that would have been used

for digestion is complete.

Now that energy,

those resources, the blood flow,

that energy is being diverted to the brain,

to other areas of your body for healing.

It's phenomenal.

This process is incredible.

And it's happening pretty quickly into this fast.

This is where people feel the omad high.

Hunger fades.

They're focused sharpens.

They're producing ketones.

It's helping with this entire process.

You feel optimized.

That's partly also because the body

activates something called counter regulatory hormones.

Counter regulatory hormones run counter to insulin.

It's your sympathetic tone,

nor epinephrine, cortisol,

adrenaline, and small amounts to help you feel focused and alert.

Because your body doesn't know.

Get this.

Your body does not know.

You are fasting for health benefits.

Your body thinks you're going through a famine.

So I need to keep this body alert,

focused, energized.

So it could be resilient enough

to go out there into the wilderness,

hunt and kill in order to stay alive.

It doesn't understand that you could go on your phone,

hit Uber Eats or DoorDash and have somebody knock on

under your door with food in 45 minutes.

You see, you are hard wired for the old school.

Every cell in your body is hard wired for fasting.

So you get the benefits of your body,

literally pumping you full of energy,

not so you could go up there and hunt and kill to stay alive,

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Now, this is where it gets even more interesting.

Hours 16-20, we'll call the peak.

This is the metabolic peak window.

You start to trigger a really important process called atophagy.

Ato, aegi, which stands for self-eating.

Your body is eating itself at this point.

Oh, that's disgusting, Ben.

Why would I want that?

What's eating damage cells?

Think of Pac-Man going within your cells.

Looking for cells that are inflamed.

Looking for mitochondria that are not burning fat well.

That are not producing energy well.

And that Pac-Man is eating those cells.

Cleaning out the junk.

It's like your refrigerator that has expired groceries.

You got to throw them in the trash.

You don't just shove them in the back of the fridge.

That'll be toxic.

These cells in your body have an expiration date

like the groceries inside of your fridge.

Atophagy is the process that gets turned on,

ramped up 16, 18, 20 hours into a fast

to clean out the junk.

You have trillions of cells inside of your body,

and billions of them need to go through this cleaning up process

every single day.

And that happens 16 to 20 hours into a fast.

There's also a surge in growth hormone at this point of the fast.

Growth hormone is a very powerful fat-burning hormone.

It's an anti-aging hormone muscle-reserving hormone.

People pay a lot of money to get growth hormone injected into them

because it works.

But there are side effects and it costs money to get it injected.

But in a fast, your body naturally produces growth hormone.

So you feel clear in control

in all the other benefits of these incredible processes happening.

However, growth hormone does not build muscle by itself

without sufficient protein.

And repeated stimulation,

muscle-protein synthesis doesn't get activated,

it doesn't stay elevated.

You see, muscle-protein synthesis is stimulated

by losing essential amino acids,

resistance training,

and eating enough protein throughout the day.

And this is the biggest mistake that people make with OMAD.

If you only eat one meal per day,

you just get that stimulation window once.

And research on muscle-protein synthesis

shows it peaks for about three to five hours after protein feeding.

After that, it drops.

And if you only stimulate this process once every 24 hours,

especially as you age,

you risk losing lean muscle mass.

This is even more critical for anyone over the age of 40.

You do not want to lose lean muscle mass.

Muscle mass is metabolic currency.

The more lean muscle mass you have,

the more insulin-sensitive you are.

If you lose lean muscle mass,

it actually lowers your metabolic rate.

And the lower metabolic rate creates a fat loss stall.

So I think one meal a day is incredible from time to time.

But I'm not a fan of one meal a day long term.

You're some more problems with it.

I talk a lot about hitting your protein target

in order to stimulate muscle-protein synthesis

to help with the lean muscle mass, insulin sensitivity, etc.

And that's going to be eating about one gram of protein

per pound of your ideal body weight.

So if your goal weight is 120 pounds,

you want to get 120 grams of protein most days.

How are you going to get that amount of protein in one sitting,

especially for older adults, especially for women?

That would be equivalent to like a 20-ounce stake,

plus eggs, plus collagen, plus something else in one meal.

How many of you watching this or listening to this right now can do that?

It's going to be hard for your digestive system

and it's going to be hard for your appetite.

And long-term, insufficient protein

will lead to lean muscle mass loss,

lowering of your metabolic rate, your metabolism,

reduced thyroid function, and fat loss resistance.

The second problem with chronic OMAD

is cortisol and hormonal stress.

Fasting is a stress to the body.

It doesn't mean it's bad.

Exercise is also a stress to the body.

It doesn't mean it's bad.

But what happens when you do too much exercise?

Then it's bad.

What happens when you do too much fasting?

Then it's bad.

See, fasting, as I mentioned earlier,

increases cortisol.

Now, when that's balanced out with feasting and enough protein,

that's a good balance.

But when you're chronically in a high cortisol state

because of chronic fasting,

and if you already have poor sleep,

high stress, thyroid issues, or hormonal imbalance,

then long daily fast can elevate cortisol excessively.

And let me say this clearly.

Women are not small men.

Female hormones are even more sensitive

to prolonged fasting,

especially during reproductive years.

Chronic fasting, aka chronic energy restriction,

can impact thyroid health, sex hormones,

and menstrual regularity.

Now, some women could thrive on OMAD.

But mostly, cycle disruption,

cold intolerance, hair thinning, and mood instability.

The third problem with long-term OMAD

is chronic underfueling.

One meal a day often means not enough nutrients,

not enough minerals, not enough protein we discussed that already,

and not enough micronutrients.

Short-term, I'm fine with it.

Over time, you're going to be cold all the time.

You're going to feel like your strength is dropping.

You're going to probably feel wired but tired,

especially at night.

Your sleep will decline, and hey,

maybe even your libido will get reduced.

And this isn't about discipline,

it's about underfueling.

So if you're watching right now listening to this,

and you're doing OMAD and noticing the following,

you're always cold, your strength is declining,

your cycle has changed,

you feel anxious at night,

or you're waking up at two to three a.m.

Feeling wired and tired.

OMAD is probably not working for you.

You need to balance it out with feasting.

Balance it out with proper protein.

Look, obviously,

people drop a ton of weight with OMAD in the beginning.

Rapidly, they feel unstoppable.

Then a few months later, their energy dips.

Their strength declines.

They lose their hair.

You see, the body always adapts,

and the goal isn't to win the fast.

It's to be metabolically flexible.

Give you a perfect example of this.

A good friend, Chris, who's helping,

we actually built this entire studio,

you see behind me, the office,

he's building up a new podcast studio.

For years, this guy was doing one meal a day.

Not every day, but most days, one meal a day.

And he was eating at night.

He would work all day, was very active,

so think of stress, physical labor.

And he couldn't lose weight.

He was stuck for years, not weeks, not months, but years.

So you know what I told Chris to do?

Stop the OMAD.

Eat more protein, eat more calories.

He ate, he almost tripled his caloric intake,

and he lost 27 pounds in 30 days.

He ate more, and he lost more.

This is a perfect example that flies in the face

of the old calories and versus calories out.

You see this change that Chris achieved,

greater than a healthy adaptation,

where his body stopped thinking.

His metabolism stopped to think that

we're no longer in this survival conservation mode.

We have all this healthy fuel coming in, burn fat.

And for many of you who are on this lesson right now,

that might be the same thing you need to do.

I'm not saying not to fast.

I'm saying too fast and feast properly.

OMAD works really well for insulin-resistant individuals,

overweight men and women, a short term.

Keyword, short term, metabolic resets.

It can be powerful just not forever.

Fasting is a tool, not an identity.

So instead of doing OMAD forever,

consider a 16-8 daily fast,

with two to three high protein meals within your window.

Consider a strength training twice a week.

Occasional 24-hour fasts are fine once or twice a week,

and strategic carb cycling one day per week.

When you do this, you get the best of both worlds.

This balance helps with muscle retention

or mount stability, sex hormones, thyroid function,

and long-term fat loss.

Like the goal isn't to eat one today,

the goal is metabolic flexibility to switch fuels easily,

to burn fat efficiently and to build lean muscle mass the right way.

One meal a day could definitely flip.

Powerful metabolic switches.

It could improve insulin sensitivity.

It could accelerate fat loss, sharpen your mental clarity,

but more of a good thing isn't necessarily a good thing.

A good thing turns into a bad thing.

The best metabolism are not the ones that survive on less.

It's the ones that are more adaptable.

Use fasting as a tool, not as an identity.

Because metabolic freedom is not about eating less.

It's about building a body that can do more.

Now let me get to a few questions here on this topic

to give you more clarity and insight.

If growth hormone increases during one meal a day,

doesn't that protect muscle?

Yeah, it absolutely does.

And in the short term, it could protect muscle and your metabolism,

but over time, months to years,

it's not enough without the proper protein stimulation

that growth hormone just can't keep up.

This omad bad for cortisol.

It is if it's chronic, but not if it's from a periodic omad.

Fasting is a stressor, as I mentioned,

it could be a healthy stressor like exercise,

but too much exercise, too much fasting, too much stress.

But from time to time, balancing it out

with feasting windows, you get the best of both worlds here.

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Is omad better than in 16.8?

They're both great.

It's the balance of both.

Now personally, I do omad once a week,

24 hour fast once a week.

On the other days, I'm doing an 18.6 schedule,

which is 18 hours fasting, six hour eating window,

and I have two to three high protein meals in that window.

And then on my Sunday, I don't fast.

I don't do low carb.

I do high carb low fat.

That's my current routine.

It works for me.

Look, I hope this made a big difference for you.

Share this with somebody you know who practices omad.

Thank you for watching.

Thank you for listening.

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