The OMAD Diet has found its way into the trends on social media as well as news media headlines. This has become one of the latest eating strategies to promise to provide everything a person needs for weight loss and maintenance.

That said, before you hop on the OMAD Diet bandwagon, it’s important to understand what it is. Moreover, it’s important to understand what it isn’t.

What is the OMAD Diet?

The One Meal A Day (OMAD) Diet is a type of intermittent fasting diet. Essentially, it requires you to fast for about 23 hours every day. Then, you eat one meal that consists of essentially whatever you want. It could be a huge salad with roasted veggies, fresh greens, beans, seeds, nuts, whole grains and your favorite vinaigrette. It could also be a double cheeseburger with fries if that’s what you prefer.

The concept behind this diet is that if you consume nothing but water for 23 hours per day, then you can feast for an hour. It states that calorie count doesn’t matter as long as you’re only eating during a one hour window per day.

What Can You Have During the 23-Hour Fast?

During the 23 hours per day the OMAD Diet requires you to fast, all you are permitted to have is water. You can also choose unsweetened coffee or tea if you’d like. That said, they must be options without any kind of sweetener at all, and without milk, cream, whitener or anything else. Green, black or white tea, herbal teas (unsweetened) or black coffee is all you’ll be permitted. Your kitchen is out of bounds except for that one hour per day.

Is OMAD Dieting Just Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is a form of time-restricted dieting. It usually involves limiting food consumption to a window of 12 hours or less within a day. In the case of the OMAD Diet, this window is a very short one. This is a more extreme form of intermittent fasting. The majority of people who follow it will skip breakfast, eat a large lunch in the middle of the day or the middle of the afternoon, and then abstain from eating until the same time the next day.

This kind of dieting is far more restrictive than other popular types of intermittent fasting diet such as the 16:8 diet that allows you an eight-hour eating window before undergoing a 16 hour fast. While following the one meal a day diet may help to encourage weight loss over the short term, the vast majority of dieters will find this strategy unsustainable. This is particularly true because many people who attempt this strategy suffer from a spectrum of unwanted side effects.