At 75, Bruce Springsteen is still going strong. The Boss played more than 100 shows over the past two years, and he isn’t showing signs of slowing down. When speaking to the Times of London, Springsteen offered some insight into what keeps him going. He’s on a one meal per day diet.
What is the OMAD diet?
The OMAD (one meal a day) diet is an extreme form of intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is different from most diets because it dictates when you eat, not what you eat. Dieters can participate in different ways. Some restrict their calorie intake to eight-hour windows, while others focus on eating all their meals while the sun is still up.
“I’ll have a bit of fruit in the morning and then I’ll have dinner,” Springsteen told Times of London’s Will Hodgkinson. “That has kept me lean and mean.”
Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Mark Mattson studied intermittent fasting for 25 years and said it’s similar to how prehistoric humans naturally ate, because they lacked consistent access to food.
“Intermittent fasting contrasts with the normal eating pattern for most Americans, who eat throughout their waking hours,” Mattson told Johns Hopkins. “If someone is eating three meals a day, plus snacks, and they’re not exercising, then every time they eat, they’re running on those calories and not burning their fat stores.”
Time-restricted dieting, like OMAD and intermittent fasting in general, works by allowing the body to burn through its sugar stores and to force it to burn fat between meals. As the most extreme form of intermittent fasting, the OMAD diet restricts eaters to a single daily meal — ensuring the longest fat-burning period between calorie intake.
The OMAD diet does have potential advantages, including weight loss. According to Canadian nephrologist and intermittent fasting expert Dr. Jason Fung, eating only one meal a day could be beneficial to people with Type 2 diabetes. By participating in the OMAD diet three times a week for a month, a diabetes patient of Fung’s no longer needed insulin medication.
“Fasting really impacts weight and sugars, because that’s the way calories are stored — as sugar and fat,” he told Fox News Digital.
Is it safe to eat only one meal a day?
The OMAD diet isn’t for everyone. According to Healthline, overly restricting calorie intake can potentially do more harm than good.
Restricting calories to only one meal a day can increase a person’s odds of developing hypoglycemia, increase their LDL (bad) cholesterol and heighten their blood pressure, according to the health news outlet.
“When someone deprives themselves of food for 24 hours, they tend to lose control and overeat when it’s time to eat again,” dietitian Natalie Rizzo, RND and author of “The No-Brainer Nutrition Guide For Every Runner,” told Health. “This can lead to choosing unhealthy options and eating way more than what feels natural in one sitting.”
Eating only a single meal a day has also been associated with nausea, dizziness, irritability, low energy and constipation. Brigham and Women’s Hospital obesity specialist Dr. Caroline Apovian went as far as to say “one meal a day is not a good idea,” when asked about the diet fad by The New York Times.
“If I tell my patients to eat one meal a day, they’re going to be starving all day,” she added. The obesity specialist also said extreme calorie restriction often leads to overeating.
The bottom line
So should you try the OMAD diet? A yearlong study found time-restricted dieting in general isn’t significantly better at shedding pounds than other diets, and eating only one meal a day comes with notable health risks. Something less extreme, like 2024′s highly lauded Mediterranean diet, might be a better fit for most people.
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