Nomad on OMAD, Mexico.
Hello everyone, This is Juan Sarmiento from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. In my last video I told you about my plans to go to Spain in May. Only Spain is closed for Americans. So we decided to come to Mexico until we can travel to Spain. I finally sold my home in California. Then on the 1st of May, crossed the Desert, and arrived here on the 5th of May. We decided to drive because of our little Chihuahua dog: Genie. I cannot say it was easy, It was hard to find a complete meal along the way. but at least I tried to limit my eating window. A balanced meal was out of the question. Fast food often includes carbohydrates in the form of French fries, bread or Corn tortillas. However, with OMAD, I am confident that one can limit the insulin spikes. This is my first episode as a Nomad on OMAD.
OMAD on the road
If you find yourself on the road in long trips, finding what to eat that is appetizing might be difficult. I for one, find the fast-food “combo meals” to be insufficient for my voracious appetite when in OMAD. Think about it, with your single meal, you have to supply your body with enough nutrients for the whole day. A combo meal is unlikely to provide you with the macro and micronutrients your body demands. Such meals are heavy on the carbohydrates and sodium and low on the protein content. This makes it even more critical to include a vitamin supplement. A high carbohydrate diet makes it difficult to find satiety and have addictive powers as I discussed in a previous video.
Eating times in Mexico
In our trip from Moorpark, California, to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, we crossed the desert, stopping in small towns with few eating choices. This is particularly true when trying to stay on the road to reach your destination as soon as possible. In California, I was taking my OMAD at 11am. Here in México, lunch starts at 2 pm. So I had the choice of a hearty breakfast before 10am or wait. So we stopped in fast food restaurants whenever we felt we could not hold any longer. By the end of our trip here, we felt that we had not eaten well at all. Now here in Puerto Vallarta, we have had to eat what feels like “brunch” in better looking restaurants. Our meals, I feel, have been low in fat and protein and high in carbohydrates.
Working schedules and adapting to OMAD
New OMADers have had to adapt to different schedules mostly for work reasons. Although at first it may seem that OMAD offers some flexibility, in practice it is hard to find a complete, healthy and balanced meal to fit in one hour of the day. Temporarily increasing your eating window, particularly on the road, may be a possible compromise. Scientifically speaking, our goal should be to reduce the number of insulin spikes in the day, and an 20:4 or 18:6 Intermittent fasting routine may accomplish that. Once we are settled in a temporary rental unit, we might return to our strict OMAD. For now, that seems unrealistic.
Exercise routine
Keeping my previous exercise routing of 2-3 hours before I started my trip has been impossible. Obviously, we can’t play tennis or do calisthenics when on the road. Now it has been 9 days since we left California, and we are completely unsettled. Our Chihuahua has been another limitation, we cannot go too far or for too long from our hotel room because Genie has her needs. We are unsure about how long we will stay in Mexico, we are simply picking places we have not seen before. We are in an adaptation period, but our goal is to return to our exercise and OMAD routines. For that we need a full accommodation with Kitchen to cook our own meals and room for exercise.
No matter how difficult it may appear now, it is critical to maintain an intermittent fasting routine of some sort. I have lost a little weight in my traveling, because I have not been eating to satiety, and I DO miss my exercise. It is clear, though, that we need time to adapt and settled in a way that we can take full advantage of the OMAD lifestyle.We have had to find an alternative route to our goal to go to Spain. I am looking forward to that time with optimism, because, despite temporary setbacks, “Life is looking up!”
