One Meal A Day (OMAD)
Aka "Spartan" routine
Having experimented with diet and meal routines over the years, I can now confidently say that I've landed on one that works for me ~90% of the time.
It's called OMAD (one meal a day)—also known as the Spartan routine.
Here's why I like it:
I lose weight without having to count calories
I'm able to have energy all day long
I appreciate food even more
Weight loss and energy
OMAD has given me the most reliable weight loss results. It's great because I don't have to count calories. I just jam all of them in at dinner.
You can choose whichever meal you like, but I like my one meal to be dinner because I tend not to be hungry in the morning, and there's no after-lunch crash. When I have a big dinner, I get tired and it's easier for me to fall asleep.
I recently wrote a post called "How and why I fast" ... that was helpful for me to talk about fasting, but I came to a realization: The issue with long-term fasting for weight loss is that I tend to binge before and after the fast, and it just wrecks my results.
There's still a ton of utility in it for rapid weight loss, but if your goal is to lose or maintain weight over longer time periods, then OMAD is the way to go.
Sure, there's a period for maybe an hour where it'd be nice to eat breakfast, but you quickly get over it. Then there's lunch, which is the most pointless meal.
How on earth do people get any work done after lunch? I think they might answer, "drink more coffee!" But then they'll find themselves on this merry-go-round of getting fragmented sleep because they're drinking too much caffeine late in the day.
You'll hear people say, "caffeine doesn't affect me," which is nonsense. The evidence is pretty clear that even though you don't think it affects you, it actually does fragment sleep. Then, when under-slept, we make poor food decisions…
Sorry to rant, but I don't like lunch because I'm just so unproductive after that, and I tend to find it a waste of a meal with unnecessary calories that could be "used" at dinner with no shame.
How I do OMAD
I like to try and keep the eating window to 60-90 minutes at dinnertime. I prefer eating earlier because it takes a while for your body to digest 1,000-2,000 calories, and you don't want that wrecking your sleep.
OMAD differs from the 18-6 "intermittent fasting" (which is just a fancy way of saying you don't eat breakfast) because it's just a stricter version, something like a 23-1 (23 hours in a fasted state with a 1-hour eating window).
I do this maybe 4-5 days a week, and on the other days, I do eat breakfast, which spikes my calorie count (useful to avoid plateaus) and helps me from going crazy.
I am totally used to it at this point. My body isn't gurgling and "weak"—in fact, I find the lack of food liberating and energizing. I feel lighter.
If you're curious, give it a shot. But you probably need to build up to it. Start out by skipping breakfast, an 18-6. Once you find that's insanely simple, tighten the window to 4 hours—maybe have just a snack in the afternoon. Then finally try one meal or a 23-1.
Do that for 3 days in a row. After that, it's smooth sailing.