 Hey everybody, Dr. O here. So ADF or OMAD. So ADF or alternate day fasting, also known as 3612 fasting, and OMAD, one meal a day, they're both intermittent fasting programs that can work amazingly well. One of the most common questions I get though is why I chose ADF versus OMAD. I'm becoming known as the ADF, the alternate day fasting guy, but what I really am is the find what plan works best for you. And that can change based on your goals, that can change based on how much weight you have to lose. Your plan may change and should change as you go. I've never tried to talk anyone out of a plan that is working well for them and I never will. A tool is only good if it's the right tool for you and the right tool for the job. So what's the science say here? Scientific evidence of diets for weight loss, different macronutrient composition, intermittent fasting, and popular diets. I want to read a quote here. In the long term, current evidence indicates that different diets promoted similar weight loss and adherence to diets will predict their success. So the plan that's right for you is the plan that you can stick with long enough to achieve success. It's that simple. So here, this is what AD, just real quickly, what ADF looks like at 3612 fasting. You see how you eat one day and you fast the next. It's a 36-hour fast, though, because you go from after supper on Monday night, dinner on Monday night, so you don't eat the rest of Monday. You don't eat Tuesday and then you don't eat until breakfast on Wednesday morning. So it's not 24-hour fasting, it's 36-hour fasting. So you see here, eat, fast, eat, fast, eat. Again, this is called 3612 fasting. You can modify this as needed. I shared how I did that in my alternate day fasting video, but that's what alternate day fasting looks like. OMAD is different. You see how every day of the week you eat one meal a day or OMAD. I put here between six and seven because most people I know that use OMAD, they do eat dinner. And some people do extend their eating window and do what you would call a 22-to-plan, where they're maybe eating in a two-hour window instead of a single hour, but OMAD can be a great way to be in a calorie deficit every single day. It's also great if you want to lose weight quickly, but you're too lean for 36-hour fasts or you just don't find them sustainable. So it's a wonderful tool for lots and lots of people. So what do they have in common? They're both great ways to get in a calorie deficit. They're both great ways to lose fat. You can see me looking at a five-pound blob of fat in that picture there. To me, fasting is the most sustainable way to consume fewer calories without dealing with constant hunger, right? Long periods of time without eating allow you to eat more when you do eat, which is more aggressive. This is another question I get. A lot of people that use OMAD will say that alternate day fasting is aggressive. And most people do think that, that alternate day fasting is more aggressive than one meal a day. Common sense absolutely says that'd be true, but let's actually look at it. One meal a day actually allows for fewer meals and shorter eating windows than alternate day fasting does. I eat 10 to 14 meals per week on alternate day fasting compared to only seven with OMAD. And I also have 40 hours of eating window per week compared to seven with OMAD. So this actually explains why some people have better success with OMAD because I think it is actually more aggressive in some ways. So here's the list of things I want to cover quickly about why I prefer OMAD. Longer fasting windows, longer eating windows, optimizing protein intake at least sometimes, the benefits of calorie cycling, fits my schedule better, personal things, fits my goals better, and then I'm less likely to overeat. So let's go through some of these or all of them, but some a little more quickly than others. Am I saying OMAD is bad? No, absolutely not. I know how the internet works, right? People think that because I'm saying why I prefer alternate day fasting that I'm saying OMAD is bad? I'm absolutely not. I'm just explaining why it wasn't the right choice for me. I would love to hear why you chose the intermittent fasting plan that you were using. Maybe you're doing 2MAD or 168 fasting or something else. So reach out and let me know. So when do these differences even matter before we dive into them? I think the differences are super small or don't matter at all if you have a lot of fat to lose, right? The differences become a lot more significant as you get closer to your goals, right? I've done several videos, you can see them here, about how to determine when aggressive fasting is safe and when it isn't. So here's a study that I didn't cover in those other videos. So differences in fat, carbohydrate, and protein metabolism between lean and obese subjects undergoing total starvation. So during prolonged starvation, protein loss and the percent of energy that came from protein oxidation are two to three times higher in lean subjects and two to three times lower in subjects that are living with obesity. And the contribution of protein to net glucose production is half as much in someone that's obese compared to someone that's lean. So this means that if you have a lot of fat on your body that can provide lots of energy, your body won't be digging into your lean mass stores. So you don't have to worry about things like optimizing protein if you have a tremendous amount of weight to lose. The little things really don't become the big things until you get pretty lean. Okay, so number one, the benefits of longer fasting windows. So 36 hours of fasting should lead to higher ketone levels and more autophagy or cell repair and renewal than 23 hours of fasting. So you see here, I like to use the biosense breath ketone meter that they use a score called ACE to tell you what stage of ketosis you're in. My ACE score would typically double or triple between hours 24 and 36 of my fasts. It takes a minimum of 16 to 18 hours for increased autophagy from fasting. Several studies actually say that there's no evidence of increased autophagy in humans anyways until 24 hours are beyond. And autophagy can actually increase up to 300% by hour 36. So it's one of the reasons I like the longer fasting windows is I see more ketones and I'm assuming that means there's more autophagy. We can't measure autophagy directly yet. Longer fasting windows also increase growth hormone levels and lower insulin levels even further. So for most people you'd see better ketosis, increased autophagy, higher growth hormone and lower insulin levels if you fasted for 36 hours versus 23. But a 23 hour fasting window will improve all of these. So OMAD has shorter fasting windows but you have them more frequently. Alternate day fasting, you have less fasting windows but each one should be more clinically significant. So I also like 36 hour fast because all I have to do is make it until bedtime and I can turn a 24 hour fast into a 36 hour fast. So it's 6pm, I go to bed pretty early. I made a course about sleep, I think sleep is super important. So it's like if I can just get till 9 or get till 9.30 and go to bed and then I wake up and when I have breakfast my 24 hour fast has now become a 36 hour fast. This is why I chose alternate day fasting but if the longer fasting windows make you miserable then OMAD would be a much smarter choice for you. I would also say that these benefits were primarily talking more about health effects than the actual calorie deficit so keep that in mind if your primary goal is weight loss. Next the benefits of longer feeding windows. So alternate day fasting you have longer fasting windows on one side but then you have longer feeding windows on the other when you do eat. This primarily has to do with protein timing and calorie cycling so let's dive in and see what those things mean. So protein, the weight of the evidence says that you need three or more protein rich meals in an 8 plus hour window if you want to maximize muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth. This means that neither ADF, alternate day fasting or OMAD can satisfy your protein requirements all the time. This is why I have people progress to less aggressive forms of fasting as they get lean. This is also why I recommend 16-8 fasting if muscle building is a top priority. So let's look at the science here. So what does the science say? Dietary protein distribution positively influences 24 hour muscle protein synthesis in healthy adults. So these are two diets, same amount of protein, same amount of calories, that's very important. So they had protein, they had breakfast, lunch and dinner but the even group had let's just say around 30 grams of protein at each meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. The skew or skewed group ate about 10 grams of protein for breakfast, about 16 at lunch and then 63 or 64 grams at dinner. So that's why it was called skewed. Most of it was skewed to the last meal of the day. The 24 hour muscle protein synthesis rate was 25% higher in the even group that spread their protein out throughout the day more evenly than the skewed group that saved most of their protein for the one evening meal. These differences would be even bigger if they saved all of their protein for one meal. The next study, moderating the portion size of a protein rich meal improves anabolic efficiency in young and the elderly. So the other issue is there's a limit to how much protein your body can use to increase muscle protein synthesis from one meal. I'm not saying there's a limit to how much you can digest or absorb but at some point adding more protein isn't going to stimulate more muscle protein synthesis. So this study compared 30 grams of protein versus 90 grams of protein in one meal. It all came from lean beef so 30 grams of protein from lean beef increased muscle protein synthesis by approximately 50% which is what you'd expect to see. The other group ate 90 grams of protein so even though there was a three fold increase in protein and there was more calories because they were eating three times as much lean beef there was no further increase in protein synthesis following the ingestion of 90 grams of protein. So you can't just keep throwing protein in one meal and expect it to increase muscle protein synthesis. I'm not saying that eating more than 30 grams of protein is bad. There are lots of other things your body can do with protein but if you're trying to maximize muscle protein synthesis it appears to be impossible in a single meal. Another one, myofibrillar muscle protein synthesis rates subsequent to a meal in response to increased doses of whey protein at rest and after resistance exercise. So this one what I wanted to show you here is that muscle protein synthesis increased by 49% when the study subjects consumed 20 grams of protein and by 56% when they consumed 40 grams of protein. So that means that increase in the protein at one meal from 20 to 40 grams would lead to a 10 to 20% higher increase in muscle protein synthesis. But the main reason I wanted to talk about this is a dose of whey protein higher than 20 grams started to stimulate amino acid oxidation. So what does your body do with protein? If you've maximized your muscle protein synthesis what does your body start to do with protein? Well it oxidizes it and turns it into fuel. So I think that this study is really important though I think it's one of the key studies that shows that 40 grams of protein might be a real ideal number for most people when it comes to in a meal, when it comes to maximize muscle protein synthesis but it's also just a reminder that your body will digest and absorb that protein but it can turn it into fuel just like it can carbs and fat. Okay so OMAD allows you to eat some protein every day which is good news but it's not possible to optimize your protein intake in one meal. The downside with alternate day fasting is that you go longer periods with zero protein but then you can actually optimize protein intake every other day by having three or four protein rich meals during your 12 hour feeding window. So neither are perfect which is why we choose the path that fits best into our lives. For me the choice to optimize protein intake half the time outweighed the choice to get some protein every day. This is especially true because the next thing I'm going to cover here because how I rely on calorie cycling to bounce back and forth between fat loss and muscle building modes. So that's the next reason I like the longer eating windows is the benefits of calorie cycling. So with alternate day fasting I get to take a psychological and the metabolic outbreak from dieting every other day. This has been the key to my sustained success. I was always pretty good at dieting every day for a few months until I fell off the wagon. Now I don't have to because alternate day fasting allows me to eat at maintenance or slightly above multiple days every week. So OMAD is a great strategy for getting into a calorie deficit but you're in a calorie deficit every day. So this calorie cycling up and down the psychological benefits are the main reason I love it but it also does appear to have metabolic advantages. And I've covered this in other places so I'm just going to show you these things quickly. So I will show you a few studies here but check out these videos about calorie cycling if you want to see why I prefer it over being in a calorie deficit every day. So study intermittent versus daily calorie restriction which diet regimen is more effective for weight loss. So they looked at this is a review they looked at studies between three and 12 weeks long and they compared intermittent calorie restriction or calorie cycling like you do with alternate day fasting versus daily calorie restriction like you would do with OMAD. So the weight loss and fat mass loss was almost always really, really similar but here's a quote in contrast less fat free mass was lost in response to intermittent calorie restriction versus daily calorie restriction. So these findings suggest that there's plenty of ways to lose weight but that intermittent calorie restriction or calorie cycling can help you retain lean mass. All right. I'm just going to cover these in those other videos but this study here just showed that refeeds can preserve fat free mass and these studies here all showed that refeeds and diet breaks can help to minimize the metabolic adaptation that comes with weight loss by boosting leptin levels. So this is a video of me being a hormone that regulates satiety. It's a signal from your fat cells that there's plenty of fat around. So there's like, you know, I went into great detail in other places. So again, I will spare you the details here but these are reasons why I like cycling calories up and down. All right. So OMAD keeps you in a calorie deficit every day. That can lead to amazing weight loss but alternate day fasting has you eating it maintenance or above several times per week which is why I like it. I like it because of the psychological break but then also that metabolic So calorie cycling using alternate day fasting also fits my goals much better. Now we're just getting into real personal opinion stuff. I like to do my strength training when I'm in a calorie surplus but I still need to be in a calorie deficit at the end of the week. So my goal's always been using alternate day fasting, build muscle one day, lose fat the next and repeat. So here you see a picture. Nothing impressive about me but again, I'm almost 45 years old. I went at least 20 years without doing any sort of exercise. I think this calorie cycling approach and optimizing protein intake really does explain how I was able to add 15 pounds of lean mass and increase my metabolic rate by 180 calories per day while losing 180 pounds of fat. So I lost 165 pounds, 180 pounds of fat and then I put on 15 pounds of lean mass. So this is the best explanation that I can offer. ADF also fits my personal schedule better. It may not you but fasting on my busy days is way easier than fasting every day. So I have some days at work where I am much busier and I actually love the fact that I don't have to take time to prepare food and eat food and clean up. So it makes sense for me to do all my fasting when I'm super, super, super busy. So that means I can fast less like on the weekends or on days where I'm less busy. So it fits my schedule that way. It also fits my training schedule like I just said. I get to be well fed on my training days. So I fast when I'm too busy to eat anyways. I feed or eat when I'm on my training days. And I also usually train in the late mornings. So if I was doing oh matter one meal a day, I'd basically be training 15 hours after my last meal and six to seven hours before my next meal, which works great for some people but doesn't work well for me. So I get the fast when it's easiest to fast. I get to eat when it makes the most sense for me to eat. And then this one here, I'm less likely to overeat. Now this is again a totally personal thing. You might be the exact opposite of this. But I've done some omad and when I'm eating one meal a day, I'm more likely to overeat. I try to basically stuff in some extra food because I know that it's the only meal I'm going to get. With alternate day fasting, when I'm eating three to four meals in a day, it's a lot easier for me to stick to my plan because I know that I have another meal coming soon. But that's completely personal. So ADF or omad, these are the reasons why I love alternate day fasting for me. These are not reasons why I think you should abandon one meal a day. Absolutely not. So try both and see which one works best for you. I'm beyond happy if omad is helping you reach your goals. You can also choose your own adventure and create a plan that mixes both. I know some people that like to do longer fast during the week and then they do omad on the weekends. Or you can split the difference. Option three is to split the difference and do a modified alternate day fasting or the warrior diet which is or 24 fasting where you have a 20 hour fasting window and four hour eating window. So with modified alternate day fasting, you still eat every day and you still get to have dinner if having dinner with your family is really important. I'll link to the video in the description here for that. And then 24 fasting or the warrior diet or some people call it too mad for two meals a day would give you a second protein feeding. So both of those might be more ideal. They would be less aggressive so you wouldn't lose weight as fast but as you get closer to your goal those might both become smarter ideas for you. Cause both of these are more sustainable long-term options for weight maintenance but that's a story for another video. All right, I hope this one helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.