Exercise is not for me
If you are anything like I was by my 52nd birthday, you hate to exercise but still do the minimum recommended. If you are overweight (BMI > 25) you try to follow the conventional wisdom of diet and exercise to no avail. You have done it for years, including calorie-restrictive diets, most likely low-fat. Inevitably, your body weight keeps increasing, though slowly until you are obese (BMI > 30). Your energy seems to decrease with the increase in pounds and years while doing the right things. Sometimes you find a few heroes on the internet that go from morbidly obese to fit through extreme exercise for hours a day. You feel that such cases are the exception and don’t believe that such efforts would pay off in your case.
Don’t lecture me
As we approach our golden years, we are told that exercise is critical for vitality. Yet, you can’t do any more than a brisk walk for a mile or two. After all, it is a big chore to carry all that weight around. In his book “How not to die”, Dr. Michael Greger recommends an hour-long walk each day. The result could be a reduction in mortality of 24%. I don’t think he’d have any trouble convincing people that this is true. Yet, he admits that most people believe that diet and exercise are equally important for weight control. Clearly, the solution is not going around preaching to people about exercise. The solution is to show us how to overcome the belief that we cannot do it. If I had to carry 60 lbs while walking for 1 hr, I probably would not do it.
It is truly not your fault
Before OMAD, I used to weight 60 lbs more than I weigh now. I believe today that an hour-long exercise would not be enough for me. Not because I need to lose weight, but because of the satisfaction I get with exercise. I almost cannot believe that I can say that today, but it is real. As a teenager, I hated exercise simply because I could not compete with much taller and stronger classmates. They seemed to have no difficulty running faster than me or hiking longer and higher than me. What was wrong with me? I used to think that I just did not have the genes for it. I grew accustomed to the thought that it was my nature. I put all my effort into knowledge, science, and career. Commuting and high pressure, sedentary work made exercise a low priority.
Diet and exercise do not work!
I just didn’t know what I needed to know to change my life, so I accepted it. I did not need convincing that to avoid obesity, hypertension, and diabetes you need to control diet and exercise. Yet “eating healthy” and walking daily for 45-50 mins did not seem to have any effect on me. I knew something was missing, I just did not know what. I was willing to try anything other than any of the familiar diets, or the too familiar weight loss programs. Because they are unsustainable, we eventually go back to old habits. Eventually, we gain all the weight back and then some. I must have been desperate to try anything when I first heard General McChrystal say that he ate 1 meal a day (OMAD) and ran 7 miles every day.
The secret is OMAD
I had no intention of running 7 miles a day, but I did believe that I could eat only OMAD. Little did I know that I had planted the seed to a new life. I now exercise every day and love it. Dr. Greger suggests 1 serving of exercise every day. One serving of exercise could be 90 minutes of moderate-intensity activities, or 40 minutes of vigorous activities. Based on this classification, I do an average of 2.8 servings every day (see image). But how is it possible that I can do this now starting at age 53 and into my 60’s? Am I emulating the 7 miles that General McChrystal runs every day only in calisthenics, hiking, and tennis? What is it about OMAD that allows me to do this?
There is an explanation
The scientific explanation might be weight loss alone, but there is more to it than that. Fasting tends to increase the levels of adrenaline and growth hormone secreted every day. Together these hormones increase performance and help maintain and grow muscle tissue. Further, OMAD induces a switch from a carb-centric metabolism to a lipid-centric metabolism. The latter makes us adapted to use fat for energy, from our own body fat stores. Everyone around me that have taken up OMAD as a lifestyle report more energy and the need to exercise. This compared to previous lethargy associated with 3 meals a day and/or high carb diets. Routinely, the only time that I feel sluggish and more like resting is right after my one meal. The culprit is insulin. If you have 3 or more meals a day, your body does not have the chance to lower insulin secretion.
With knowledge comes responsibility
When we go to restaurants we eat 2 courses and then we are presented with the dessert menu. You’d think that most people would refuse additional food, but the truth is that there is always room for some delicious dessert. Sugar does not induce much satiety, compared to dietary fat. Yet we had been told for decades to eat low-fat diets. We were told that healthy foods are non-fat foods. So we eat all the sweets we could possibly eat without feeling satiated. Is it any wonder we have little or no interest in going out for a 45 min walk? We were not to blame, until now. Without knowing about OMAD we have no way of knowing that our bodies have the potential to do at least one serving of daily exercise easily. First, however, our bodies must adapt, and start on the road to weight loss.
Now that you have the knowledge, you can no longer say that you are not to blame. You can dismiss the “diet and exercise” lectures and focus on OMAD first. If you are doing 20 min walks, keep on doing them, but you no longer need to focus on exercise. You no longer need to restrict calories either. It is not about how many calories you eat but when do you eat them. Check my plan to get into the OMAD lifestyle, and find what your body can do. You will be pleasantly surprised. Don’t focus on reaching 3 servings of daily exercise, think that one day soon you will be exercising for pleasure.
