Breaking the Fast
This is as important a part of the OMEOD as the fasting itself. We want to feast more than we want to fast. Food tastes better than any other way when you fast in advance of a meal. With OMAD I always enjoy my food. However, after 47hrs of fasting, how many calories should I eat? If I had a sedentary life, at my age, weight, and height, I need 1,876 calories every day. Plus I burned 1500 calories on Friday and 677 calories on Saturday. Therefore, I would need (1,876×2)+1500+677=5,929 calories. This seems a huge number for a person like me. I do NOT want to go into a caloric deficit state because this could reduce my metabolic rate. Conversely, if I were to eat that much, I think I would have adverse effects.
My meal
I completed my meal, trying to eat to satiety. At the end of my meal, I thought I could not eat anymore without causing adverse effects. I ate only 2456 calories. My carbs:fat:protein proportion was about 1:1:1, which is OK with me. However, reaching 5929 is not realistic. Therefore, the OMEOD system runs the risk of producing a slowdown in the metabolic rate. Right after my meal, as I type this report, I feel sluggish but very satisfied. I had a cup of coffee and would consider additional nutrition in a couple of hours, although I want to get on with my life.
Two hours later, I ate additional food to complete 2850 calories (estimated by MyFitnessPal – see image below), but I don’t think I could possibly reach the 5929 calorie goal. For the rest of the afternoon, I felt sluggish, bloated and not very energetic. To be honest, it is not pleasant to spend hours feeling uncomfortable because of heavy digestion. Even into the evening, I still felt very full an unwilling to do much, other than sitting by the computer and write.
The good and the bad
Here are my conclusions from the experience: Going into OMEOD is a disruption of my lifestyle. I am settled with the OMAD every day, as it fits my lifestyle very well. Now that my wife is in OMAD too, it is easy to organize our lives around OMAD. My wife found it unpleasant to eat her one meal alone on Friday. The fasting was doable, but I think I would need a period of adjustment if I was going to do this every week, from Thursday to Saturday. I think I could have a small snack of protein and fat on Friday evening at the 32nd hr (8 pm) to prevent the lightheadedness until I get used to the 2-day fast.
Surprisingly, my workout performance was fine, despite the apparent weakness. Thus, fitness should not be an issue. The “feasting” may be actually the hardest part. I could not eat sufficient calories to compensate for 2 days of caloric requirement. I hate 1/2 my requirements, yet I had a long and heavy digestion on Saturday afternoon.
Summary
The benefits of OMEOD over OMAD seem to me to be insufficient to justify the difficulties. Autophagy is very likely to be effective in either approach. My body weight did come down, but this may be only because of dehydration. The jury is out on that. I have experienced a plateau in my body fat loss, but it is too early to tell if OMEOD will give it a kickstart. I will monitor my weight in the days to come to see if there has been an effect.
I could adapt the 2-day fasting to my current lifestyle by doing it from Thursday to Saturday. Skipping my Friday meal is an issue because my wife and I do enjoy our meal together. I did have a bit of a tennis elbow before I started the OMEOD. Some users claim an effect on chronic inflammatory conditions. It is too early to report on my tennis elbow, but I will in due time. In conclusion, I have missed feelings about the idea of a 47hr fasting, even if it is once in a while, let alone once a week. I need to see what are the long term effects and consequences. I intend to continue to report again later.
