ONE MEAL A DAY: COULD IT WORK FOR WEIGHT LOSS?

Is eating just once a day the secret to staying trim or is it just restrictive eating?

- DR EMMA BECKET

Society has an ongoing fascination with the constantly shifting trends in celebrity diets. The one meal a day (or OMAD) diet is one such trend, reportedly championed by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, football pundit Gary Lineker and even the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. But does the science back up the claims?

OMAD is an extreme fasting diet. As the name suggests it involves eating just one big meal a day, with fasting, or very minimal eating, in between. The key focus of this kind of diet is weight control and simplicity.

There are many celebrity anecdotes surrounding OMAD and from an evolutionary point of view, it can seem reasonable to suggest that human biology is better suited to less frequent meals. This theory is based on our ancestors often experiencing cycles of feasting and fasting rather than the relatively modern construct of three meals a day. But while fasting itself isn’t new, the research on its health impacts is still in its infancy and there are very few studies on OMAD and the evidence supporting other more periodic types of fasting can’t necessarily be extrapolated into extreme fasting.