Jack Dorsey Only Eats One Meal a Day | Hacker News Reader

Jack Dorsey Only Eats One Meal a Day

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25 pointsawiesenhofer14 comments

Intermittent fasting is gaining popularity, but it's hard for me to tell which aspect (if we must choose) provides the benefit: either there is something inherent in fasting for 24 hours (one meal a day, "OMAD") itself which promotes "health" or weight loss, or it is simply that it's difficult to eat too much in one nutritionally balanced meal. Anecdotally, I've been doing this for about three months and I noticed both that I am fine with eating less (the "stomach shrinking" phenomenon), possibly due to the nature of fasting teaching my body that it doesn't need to eat so much and that I have lost a non-insignificant amount of weight - and even at this rate, I was being rather lax with it, taking days off (i.e eating two or three meals a day) now and then (which usually left me feeling bloated).

In my experience, people tend to severely underestimate how much energy they are consuming, often neglecting to take into account chips (one of those small cans of Pringles has something like 400 calories) and more egregiously, sugared soft drinks which don't leave one feeling very full.

Even if you are carb/glucose centered intake your body is able to clear more carbs with less insulin and other side effects in one meal than spread out over the day. It takes anywhere from 8-14 hours for people to get to ketosis or after eating (unless eating keto and already adapted). Autophagy starts at a similar point, which can have significant benefits anywhere from a couple hours a day to a 5-7 or 14 day fast.

Most of the research on fasting beyond 7 days shows that it's mostly going to only benefit weight loss. OMAD makes calorie management generally a lot easier. Most people have a hard time eating more than they should in under an hour or so a day. I mean, you could literally eat that much in candy, but most other sources would be difficult.

OMAD also allows for a longer, low-insulin and lower glucose window (depending on macro intake). The benefits will vary though. Eating 1-2 meals a day and not snacking or consuming anything sweetened (sugar or artificial) between meals is enough for most people to normalize their weight if not already obese and/or diabetic.

Eat clean first... cut the sugars, grains, legumes and refined seed oils (vegetable oils) first. Stop snacking second. 1-2 meals third. Longer fasting fourth. ... depends on how bad off you are. Some physical activity and weight lifting is generally beneficial but intake is the primary factor regarding overall weight and health.

Isn't the whole "3 meals a day" a modern invention? Maybe 1 meal a day is the natural diet of humans..

OMAD (One Meal A Day) is probably more than a lot of primitive man ate. Unless stopping near some fruit or nut bearing bushes or trees during their season that is, where they likely engorged themselves for a while.

The rest may have been filled with fishing or hunting or otherwise foraging. More time looking for food than eating it. Given the benefits of fasting and time restricted eating, I'd say OMAD is probably very natural.

Dr. Jason Fung is pretty much considered a leading expert on fasting in general, even if his presentation is a bit folksy. There was also a lot of cold war era Russian research on fasting benefits.

When eating paleo and more so with keto, I find a lot of people naturally gravitate to 1-2 meals a day once they stop snacking between planned meals. A lot of people aren't hungry at breakfast, and often will lead to one larger and one smaller meal over time.

For the past year and a half, my advice to most people is eat clean first. Avoid refined sugars, all grains and legumes and avoid refined seed oils (vegetable oils, anything not cold pressed or animal derived). Vegetarian can be an option above that, but will generally include legumes. It's hard to be vegetarian without refined foods or legumes (common allergen).

When cutting starchy foods, and getting a bit more fat, eating lots of veggies or not, once past the hormone driven cravings it's pretty easy. Social queues are much harder though.

I did this before but was mainly because was too lazy and busy to eat.

My life. :)

I gotta wonder if Dorsey has intermittent snacking going on, I find I'm pretty damn functional on one meal plus semi-healthy snacks (mixed nuts/berries/small chocolate bits, mostly).

If he is walking 10 miles a day that's ~1000 calories. Assuming he needs another 1500-ish how is it possible to eat 2000+ calories in one sitting? I imagine in reality he is grazing on snacks/fruit all day or something but what do I know? I'm CEO of 0 companies...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

Friend of mine did this. I don't have the discipline.

Kidney stones in 3.. 2.. 1..

Does eating only once a day contribute to kidney stones?

If there's some balance to the diet, and not over-consuming lean meat it should be fine. Most of the people I know on OMAD don't have any kidney issues.

Care to explain why this would give someone kidney stones? I've been on a variation of the 5-2 diet (eat 5 days a week, fast 2 days a week) for about 7 years. I've had kidney stones once in my life but it was years before I ever tried fasting/keto/5-2.

Sounds kind of eating disorder-y. Orthorexia? Manorexia?

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