#290 1 MEAL VS 3 MEALS - New Study Comparing OMAD vs 3 Meals a Day

Siim Land (0:00)

This episode is brought to you by Self Decode. Self Decode is a genetics decoding company. You can get personalized health recommendations based on your DNA and the latest scientific research. They have numerous different DNA reports for different areas of focus like weight loss, longevity, gastrointestinal health, cognition and even mood. Recently Self Decode came out with their 2 software that incorporates artificial intelligence in generating DNA reports. It's the most advanced and comprehensive consumer DNA service in the world. You can get a 10% discount with the code SIIM at selfdecode.com. Head over to selfdecode.com and use the code SIIM for a 10% discount on your personalized DNA reports. Hey, welcome back to the channel, my name is Siim Land and in this video we're going to talk about this new study that compared eating one meal a day with three meals a day and it was a pretty good study. They actually had similar calorie intake and they controlled a lot of the variables. So we're going to be going through this study published in January 2022 I'm going to give you my own thoughts about it and some additional input. Make sure you click like and subscribe as well for future videos about optimizing your health and performance.

So here's the study January 11, 2022, differential effects of one meal per day in the evening on metabolic health and physical performance in lean individuals. So that's a good thing that it was in Norway, done in Norway, and they actually had people who are in good health, so to say, that they're not obese and they're not like in metabolic syndrome, those kind of things, so it would be like a pretty, you know, it would apply to, let's say, a person who is already taking care of their health and who is having some good metabolic health at the same time. Did you fucking 48% body fat? So the study, they put, they had a similar calorie intake. They didn't like, it wasn't like a metabolic ward study that would be fed the exact same calories, but they did use food apps or food counting apps that looked at how many calories they're consuming. Obviously, people are bad at self reporting and they can underestimate or overestimate the calorie intake. But regardless, it was at least, at least they had similar calories, allocated calories, you caloric feeding provided by a single meal with a 22 hour fast and two hour reading window versus three meals per day in a randomized crossover study. And it took 13 participants, which 11 completed the study, five males, six females. Their age was 31 plus and minus 1.7 years. Their BMI was 24, so they weren't obese, they were lean. Participants consumed all the calories needed for stable weight in either three meals or one meal per day between 17 and 19 for 11 days per study period. So it's not like a super long study, but 11 days is still pretty good to see some differences or results.

They also used Dexascan to assess the basically results and the body compositions and these are the differences. So three meals a day lost 0.5 kilograms plus or minus 0.3 and one meal a day lost 1.4 kilograms plus or minus 0.3. So obviously one almost one kilo more lost in the one meal a day group, but the difference is that the one meal a day group also lost a bit more lean mass and fat-free mass.

So they did lose more weight in total, but a lot of it or half of that even was basically lean mass and half of it was fat mass. Whereas the three meals a day group, they lost significantly less fat mass, only like 0.1 kilograms, but they also lost a bit less lean mass. So they lost half as little lean mass as the one meal a day group, but they lost almost like six or seven times less fat mass as well. So yeah, the one meal a day group may make you lose more weight and it may make you lose more fat as well, but it also has like a higher cost of lean mass reduction, which has been found in other similar comparison studies as well, so that the intermittent fasting groups tend to lose more fat mass, but they also make you lose a bit more lean mass. Obviously, there's ways to mitigate that.

You can like increase your protein intake, you have higher protein intake. If you have a higher calorie intake, if you are in a calorie surplus, then you're probably not going to lose any muscle either on any of these diets. Me who have been doing one meal a day for five years plus now and even more, you can see that I've still gained muscle mass over the course of time, I haven't lost muscle mass. This left picture is when I'm in the military, 19 years old, 68 kilos, doing a lot of cardio exercise and I was eating three meals a day because of being in the military, so to say, you had to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. So it was, obviously, I've still gained muscle regardless of eating one meal a day. I eat much less frequently now, but I've still gained significant, almost like 15 kilograms of muscle over the course of seven years. So yeah, obviously, that is not the only thing that matters, but it's something to remember that yeah, you can still lose muscle if you're eating one meal a day, but you can prevent against that.