 All right, this is going to be a fun one I want you to eat this for the one meal a day that you're eating when fasting Now if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know, I eat one meal a day the so-called OMAD protocol during the winter as part of my fasting protocol for Optimal Health and I've been doing this now for 23 years and So far so good So everybody wants to know what do I eat for my one meal? Well, I'm going to reveal this in just a moment, but first I'm going to explain why I Practice this intermittent fasting schedule for half the year So why would I do this? Well first of all, I Do it during the winter because winter would normally be a time of less food And that's true even in the jungle There are times in the jungle where we all came from originally where food is not very plentiful fruit as you know only ripens once a year in the jungle in the spring and summer and Maybe a little bit in the fall and then it's not available at other times of the year those of us who grew up in the northern hemisphere or even southern hemisphere where there are Strong seasons know that the winter seasons is a time of less food availability You can't grow it in the winter. You could store it potentially and even animals are harder to come by in the winter so there is good evolutionary evidence that we went through periods of getting a lot to eat and Storing fat for the winter and then living on our fat for extended periods of time and not having much access to food And so there there are circadian rhythms that happen in a 24-hour cycle that most of us are now aware of but there's also circadian rhythms that happen with Spring summer fall and winter in fact looking at hunter-gatherers Modern hunter-gatherers they follow an absolute interesting seasonal circadian rhythm with the different foods they ate and interestingly enough their microbiome Changes dramatically from season to season so there's evidence that we should vary our food and we should vary the amount of food and the types of food we eat from season to season So from an evolutionary standpoint, I've chosen winter and spring as the times where I'm going to cut back on food Do I do it in the summer and fall in general? No, although last year I did add More omads to my diet during the week just for fun and it really didn't make much difference one way or another Now how in the heck do you just eat one meal a day? Aren't I starving to death all the time well as I point out in my last two books? You don't want to go from eating 16 hours a day lots of little meals to eating in a two-hour window and Fasting 22 out of 24 hours most people as I talk about in unlocking the KEO code will fall flat on their face You will have no energy. You will have headaches. You will not want to do anything But you want to gradually transition To compressing your eating window to a smaller and smaller time period. I Prefer to have my one meal a day at dinner time. Why do I do that because both my wife and I work and It's really the only time we have to sit down and eat a meal together So sure could I eat one my one meal a day at lunch or could I eat my one meal a day at Breakfast and then not eat the rest of the time sure and those are certainly practical options, but Just from a family standpoint I've chosen to eat my one meal a day at dinner Recently we've had a number of patients because of unlocking the keto codes Influence on them Adopt one meal a day and I just saw two of them a husband and wife team In their 60s adopt this program before their last blood test and I was particularly worried believe it or not about the wife who even though she was of normal weight and Had a normal insulin level had actually a very elevated Insulin like growth factor one IGF one those of you who've read my books or follow me know that IGF one a growth factor is a very good predictor of Longevity by that I mean people who have low insulin like growth factors tend to live a long time and live well People who have elevated insulin like growth factors tend to have shorter lives and there's some evidence of increased cancer in those individuals because As we get older I can guarantee you there is nothing in us that we want to grow so growth factor makes things grow and the evidence from the Italian Athlete study that I reference in the last book shows that people who compress their eating window Dramatically reduce their insulin like growth factors, even if they don't change the amount of calories they and sure enough This woman was running insulin like growth factors in the low 200s, which Personally at that age You don't want Just switching over to one meal a day for two months prior to the test Dropped her insulin like growth factor from 210 down to 120 That's a 90-point drop and that's dramatic The husband did even better. He started out at about 149 and he dropped down to 89 Which once you start getting under a hundred if you look at my patient population my super old patients 95 and above who are doing well They run IGF ones of 50 to 70 and it's very consistent across the board. So It's one way to manipulate I think a very important marker of aging which is insulin like growth factor and again the studies both in animals and in Athletes Italian athletes suggest that this is a good method to Change what's happening in insulin like growth factor now What's the optimal meal to eat if you're only going to have one meal a day? Now to begin this conversation I need to set the record straight if you read my latest book on locking the keto code You know, it's actually not what you eat that matters the most to a healthy metabolism But how you eat and for how long you eat? that's the most dramatic finding of the NIH experiments done by dr. Alfred de Cabo in mice looking at Not so much the foods the mice were given to eat But the timing of when the mice got to eat their food And what he showed was that it really didn't matter whether the mice were given a high fat diet a High protein diet a high carbohydrate diet the outcome was driven by how Short a time period that the mice ate the food that they were given during a 24-hour period The mice that ate all day Didn't live very long the mice that compressed whatever they were eating Whether it was high protein high fat high carbohydrate Compressed that eating window lower and lower live the longest regardless of what they were eating and had far less amyloid production and Beta amyloid then the animals that ate all day long So that's actually really Exciting news and as you know one of my sayings from that book is eat short to live long So that experiment and the Italian athlete experiment has convinced me that Compressing my eating window is one of the strongest ways I can impact my long-term health so Is there any bad news to that study well all the mice eventually died But the mice in the high sugar group Most of the mice died from liver cancer, and that's actually a very common cancer in mice so Long story short would I make my one meal a day mostly sugar? No, I wouldn't but the takeaway is the beauty of Constricting the time that you eat all of your calories during the day gives you Lots more options into not being a fanatic. Oh, you know, I can't have this I can't have that I can't have that because that's high carbohydrate or that's high fat or that's high protein Just compressing your eating window gives you tremendous power over over your health, so What would I suggest you have well first of all I can't say this enough The more I can eat. Have you eat green things the better off you are as I mentioned in unlocking the keto code the more you can eat the rainbow Which really means eat polyphenols the better you're going to be I've said this before Multiple times a week. I will have pressure cook beans as part of my meal And that just drives some of my critics crazy, but pressure cooking beans makes them actually an important part of your diet I learned this from my years at Loma Linda. The other thing I think you everyone should add to their diet is nuts particularly pistachios particularly walnuts and we'll go into that on another lecture, but I You know every day I change what I eat Do I have my favorite sure, but the great thing is I? Don't think in five years. I've gotten through all the yes list of all the yes foods, so there's so much you can do All right, that's it for today about the best meal to eat when eating once a day Because I'm dr. Gundry, and I'm always looking out for you. I Hope you enjoyed this episode of the dr. Gundry podcast make sure to check out the next one here Water fasting is dangerous Because of that fact now if you want to do that Understanding the risk you want to absorb those heavy metals and organo pesticides by taking Chlorella tablets and activated charcoal