September 1.  I stepped on the scale this morning and saw 187.8 pounds.  I’ll take it.  I started this ketovore restart at 197.0, which means I’m beginning September 9.2 pounds down.  That’s exciting. But I also know enough about weight loss to know I’m not going to keep losing weight at this pace. Some of this early drop is undoubtedly water weight from cutting carbs and changing how I’m eating.

If I actually lost two pounds every day, I’d disappear sometime around Halloween.  So, no, that’s not the plan.  Instead, as September begins, I want to try something a little different.  I’m going to attempt OMAD every other day.  Not OMAD every day.  Not fasting for three days.  Not seeing how miserable I can make myself in the name of weight loss.  I’m trying to figure out something much more important:  What can I actually stick with?

First, What Is OMAD?

OMAD stands for One Meal a Day.  It’s exactly what it sounds like.  Instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, you consume your food during one meal and fast for the remainder of the day.  I’ve done OMAD before, and there’s something about it that works particularly well for me.  It simplifies things.  I’m beginning to realize that one of my biggest problems with food isn’t necessarily what I’m eating.  It’s how many opportunities I give myself to eat.

Breakfast.  A snack.  Lunch with a client.  Something in the afternoon.  Dinner.  Maybe something after dinner.  That’s a lot of opportunities to make a bad decision.  With OMAD, most of those decisions disappear.  Am I eating breakfast?  No.  Should I grab something while I’m out?  No.  Someone brought donuts?  No.  The decision has already been made.  And for me, there’s something incredibly freeing about that.

But I’m Not Sure I Want to Do OMAD Every Day

This is where my September experiment comes in.  I’m going to try doing OMAD every other day. On an OMAD day, the plan is simple.  I’ll have coffee and water during the day and then eat one good ketovore meal.  The next day, I can eat more normally—probably two meals—but I’m still eating ketovore.  That’s an important distinction.

The schedule isn’t:  OMAD → Cheat Day → OMAD → Cheat Day  That would be a spectacularly bad plan.  Instead, I’m thinking:   OMAD Ketovore → Regular Ketovore → OMAD Ketovore → Regular Ketovore  I want the non-OMAD days to give me some flexibility without turning them into an excuse to eat whatever I want.

Why Every Other Day?

Because I live in the real world.  That’s one of the biggest things I’ve already learned from this restart.  Ketovore at home is easy.  Give me some ground beef, chicken, eggs, steak, pork rinds, cheese or another low-carb option and I’m perfectly happy.  I don’t need an elaborate recipe.  The challenge starts when I leave home.  I meet clients over lunch.  I attend meetings.  I go to events.  I eat with other people.  Sometimes lunch isn’t something I can conveniently skip.

And I’ve spent enough years trying different diets to know what happens when I create rules that don’t fit my actual life.  Eventually, I break the rule.  Then I decide I’ve failed.  Then one bad meal becomes a bad day.  A bad day becomes a bad weekend.  And suddenly I’m telling myself:  “I’ll start again Monday.”  I’ve had enough Mondays.  I’m trying to build something I can live with instead.

OMAD May Help With My Bigger Problem: Overeating

I’ve talked about this before, but my problem isn’t only carbs.  I overeat.  I can make a perfectly ketovore meal and still eat too much of it.  Apparently, calories don’t look at a second helping of steak and say:  “Oh, he’s doing ketovore. These don’t count.”  Rude.  That’s another reason I’m interested in OMAD.  If I’m eating once, I’m naturally limiting the amount of food I can consume during the day.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to deliberately starve myself during that meal. I want to eat enough protein and food to feel satisfied.

But when the meal is finished, I’m finished.  No grazing for the rest of the evening.  At least that’s the experiment.  We’ll see how Fred does when Fred actually has to follow Fred’s rules.

The Non-OMAD Days May Be Just as Important

This is something I’m going to watch carefully.  It would be very easy to use OMAD as justification for overeating the following day.  “I only ate once yesterday, so I deserve this.”  That’s exactly the mentality I don’t want.  My non-OMAD days aren’t rewards.  They’re simply days when I have more flexibility.

If I have lunch with a client, I can eat lunch.  If I want dinner with my family, I can eat dinner.  But the basic ketovore rules don’t change.  Protein first.  Keep the carbs low.  Avoid sugar.  Avoid the obvious junk.  And perhaps most importantly for me:  Don’t eat just because food happens to be available.

I’m Trying to Find Something Sustainable

I think this is becoming the real theme of my 30-day ketovore restart.  I started because I wanted to lose weight.  Obviously, I still do.  But I’m becoming more interested in figuring out why I eat the way I do.  I’ve learned that home isn’t really my problem.  I’ve learned that being around food creates temptation whether I’m hungry or not.  I’ve learned that I need to pause before eating instead of automatically saying yes.  I’ve learned that overeating ketovore food is still overeating.

And now I’m going to learn whether alternating OMAD days gives me enough structure to lose weight while giving me enough flexibility to live my normal life.  Maybe it will.  Maybe it won’t.  That’s why I’m calling this an experiment.

September Starts at 187.8

Yesterday, I ended August at 189.8.  This morning?  187.8.  My original restart weight was 197.0.  So I’m officially starting September 9.2 pounds lighter than where this experiment began.  I’m thrilled about that.  But I’m not going to make the mistake of believing the scale will continue dropping every morning.  It won’t.  I’m going to have fluctuations.

I’m going to hit plateaus.  I’ll probably see the scale go up after doing everything “right.”  That’s part of this.  My goal for September isn’t to wake up every morning and demand a lower number from the scale.  My goal is to build a pattern:  Ketovore. OMAD every other day. Better portions. Better decisions.   Fewer excuses.  Then we’ll see what the scale does.  I don’t need the most aggressive diet.  I need an eating pattern I can still be following six months from now.

So that’s the next experiment.  September 1.  187.8 pounds.  9.2 pounds down.  OMAD every other day.  And 30 days ahead of me.  Let’s see what happens.