More energy, lose weight faster

Now that you accomplished the critical goal of reaching the 21-day streak on OMAD, what next? There are two important things you may have noticed:

• a. Unlike your diets of the past, you have more energy, not less.
• b. You are losing weight, but think you can do better.

First, let me remind you that studies of “The Biggest Loser” (TBL) contestants gained some, most or all of their weight back by cutting calories. They also worked out for what appeared to be unsustainable amounts of time. Therefore, our next step should not be to increase our workouts or reduce our caloric intake. Our goal now is to put our endocrine system to work for us, unlike what TBL contestants did. We are not going to accelerate our weight loss by reducing our caloric intake or increase the duration of our workouts. Even if you feel full of energy, it is not only because you are lighter. OMAD has several physiologic effects that make you more energetic, and this is what we should emphasize in this second phase of our OMAD weight loss plan.

Not how much but when to workout

So far, your weight loss has not been because of how little you eat, but how often are you eating. Similarly, you can improve your speed of weight loss, not by how much exercise you do, but when do you do it. In other words, now you are going to change your exercise routine not by increasing its duration. Instead, you are going to adjusting the time when you do it. The reasons will become abundantly clear with a little science.

So far you have cut the number of insulin spikes from 3 or more a day to just one. We simply cut the number of meals. Now you have adapted your metabolism from one glucose-based to one lipid (fat)-based. When your fasting starts, your body begins to utilize your blood sugar, and your liver and muscle glycogen for energy. The decline in Insulin triggers glucagon, a hormone with the opposite function: breakdown of glycogen and use of glucose for energy. But wait, there is more.

The deeper into your fasting you are, the more depleted of glycogen your stores will be. This is a necessary step to begin a state of ketosis: the mobilization of your fat stores in the form of ketone bodies for energy production. During fasting, your Insulin:Glucagon ratio will be low. The effect of this state will be ketogenesis, critical if you want to mobilize your fat stores. If at this critical moment you do your workout, you will be able to use ketones for energy. Further, because this is a more efficient way to use energy, you will accomplish greater endurance. Here is a lecture on the Insulin:Glucagon ratio, in case you are science oriented.

21 days, again

Now here is the important point about working out: Exercise may not change anything, even if you burn 400 calories every day. If you eat the Standard American Diet (SAD), your Insulin:Glucagon ratio may be ~4, while fasting may reduce it to ~0.8. Walk for 60 minutes around your neighborhood after eating a SAD meal, may have absolutely no effect on fat mobilization. So we want our exercise routine to count. It is not about the calories it consumes, but where are those calories coming from. We want them to come from our fat stores, we want our workout to help induce ketogenesis. What we want is to increase the need for energy at a time when that energy cannot be supplied by glucose or glycogen breakdown.

For the last 21 days, you have adapted your body to consume the glycogen stores in your liver and muscle. In the next 21 days, you will get your body used to induce ketogenesis to supply the energy needed to complete your workout. To accomplish this, we need to workout shortly before breaking our fast. This is to make sure that our Insulin:Glucagon ratio is as low as possible. Our next step, therefore, is changing our routine so our exercise is in the morning, before going to work. Then, you could plan to have your meal at mid-day. If you have your meal after work, it is going to be very difficult to work out right after a long commute. If you eat at noon, it is going to be difficult to reach satiety having your meal in the cafeteria.

Making the right choices

Here is when making the right decisions and then creating new habits might make a huge difference. In a cafeteria, you have few choices other than a SAD meal. Working out in the morning and having your meal in the evening is a possible alternative, although it is not ideal. I believe that you can still alter the timing of your meal, fasting, and workouts in a way that will induce even faster weight loss. To make this possible, you are going to have to put some effort into creating a new habit. Therefore, our next challenge is 21 days of exercise while fasting. The longer the fasting time before your workout, the better.

Let me assure you that OMAD alone does a lot for your body, not only on the weight loss arena. So you are well ahead of most people in the developed world. Changing the timing of your workout is only one more bit of help to accelerate your weight loss, our ultimate goal.