How to Survive Eating Only Once a Day to Lose Weight & Improve Fitness

Planning of losing weight and becoming very fit for a long term? Consider an option of eating a full meal only once a day. Is this really successful? Yes. The secret lies on slowly conditioning your body to adapt these changes. The body will learn in the long term not to accumulate extra calories you get from your eating which can cause undesirable increase in weight.

How to make this work?

Step1.) To make this less challenging especially for three meals a day heavy eaters, you might want a slow transition to eating once a day which could take months for your body to adapt. It is because abrupt changes in meals (such as suddenly changing eating routine from 3 full meals to only one full meal a day) can cause disorders in your stomach and intense hungriness.

So at first, consider an option to decrease your food intake from 3 full meals to only 2 meals a day. Do this for three months to give time for your body to adapt.

Take note that once you start reducing your meal intake while no changes in lifestyle and activity; the first warning is slight hunger. You need to satisfy this slight hunger by either:

a.) Drinking coffee with cream.

b.) Drinking tea with cream.

c.) Drink any beverages less in sugar such as natural juice (not soft drinks).

d.) Eat fruits (like Banana, etc.)

These beverages and snacks act as a buffer to the slight hunger. As days go by, your body starts to adapt that routine. When you reduce your food intake from 3 to 2 full meals a day; it is not advisable to reduce the amount of food you eat during your 2 full meals. You can either have it the same as you like.

Step2.) Now you are getting used to eating only twice a day, but you still have not reached your goal to eating only once. After the third month, you start eating once a day IN ALTERNATE DAYS OF THE WEEK. It is not still advisable to eat only once a day after the third month for the entire fourth month! Below is a sample meal plan for the entire week. To be effective, you start replacing the lost full meal with a healthy snack session for either of the following (in addition to the previous suggestions):

a.) Biscuits low in fat content but high in carbohydrates.

b.) Oat meal.

c.) Fruits.

d.) Milk

Sample meal plan:

1^st day – Eat two full meals + healthy snacks

2^nd day – Eat one full meal + two healthy snack sessions

3^rd day to 7^th day of the week... = alternate the above options, so in the 3^rd day you will need to eat two full meals again with snacks. While on the 4^th day, you need to eat one full meal with two snack sessions. Alternate until the week is done; repeat this for the entire fourth month. It is important for your full meal to have a well balance diet of proteins, carbohydrates and all necessary vitamins and minerals. Also it is important that at this stage of your diet, sleep very well (6- 7 hours a day) because it helps your body to rest properly and conservative in spending energy (will make you feel less hungry during the day).

Step3.) Your body is now conditioned to eat one full meal in some days of the week. On the fifth month, you might want to increase the occurrence of one full meal a day from 3 times a week (approximate) to 4 to 5 times a week. So you will reduce the days where you are eating two full meals a day.

Step4.) On the sixth month, you might want to try eating once a meal for one straight week. Then on the next week, you mixed with two full meals (alternate) then go back again to one full meal a day for the next week. You will notice that your weight drops substantially since the first month and without any feeling intense feeling hunger, stress, etc. It is still not recommended to do aerobic, heavy exercise starting from the first month of diet. The weight loss should only be due to the reduction of excess food intake.

Step5.) Probably if things are looking very well, your body is fully conditioned at eating only once a meal per day in the seventh to 8^th month. You should be able to do this for the entire days of the month. If you continue to do this for the entire year, your weight drops dramatically and you will become leaner and start to look very sexy.

There will come a time that you will eventually stop losing weight. This is normal and nothing to worry because this is the weight stabilization period (12 months to 18 months after the first diet). You cannot further lose weight because your food intake and body energy consumption are now in equilibrium. If you want to further look sexy, this is the time to do aerobic exercise to lose those excess body fats (yes you might now weighing less but this does not mean you have a low body fat percentage). To get rid of those body fats, you need to work out aerobically.

Why not go directly to any workout to lose weight? It’s very painful and stressful. Imagine you are overweight and you go directly to any aerobic workout such as running, cycling and swimming 5 times a week or even once week can be very painful to your knees. By losing weight first, you will feel lighter and injury-free the moment you hit the road for your first running workout. When you work out, you might go back to feel hungry again since one full meal a day might appear insufficient (because calories are consumed during work out). The solution is to eat MORE only on your one full meal in a day (more carbohydrate content). There is no need to go back to eating twice or thrice a day or else you will start gaining weight again!