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Omad 5-2

Hi, I wanted to ask something about doing omad 5-2, which is five days of eating and two days of fast. Since I have already experienced intermittent fasting and Omad and have had results with both, my idea was to combine one of the two while remaining in a calorie deficit and then every week do two days of fast. I was thinking about this only for the fact that with the usual diet I obviously lose weight since I am in a calorie deficit, but adding these two days when I don't eat every week maybe I would be able to speed it up, get to the weight I had this summer first and then do a Reverse to return to normal calories. My idea was this, mostly to save time without having to go back to dieting for months, but I just wanted to know if anyone has already experienced something like this and if they have actually noticed improvements or if they have achieved results faster. compared to the normal calorie deficit seven days a week.

Answer

How slowly are you losing? It’s only healthy to lose a couple lbs a week at the very most (pretty sure it’s more so along the lines of about 1-2 lb a week). Unless you’re morbidly obese, slow and steady wins the race. You dont want to drop weight so quickly that you’re breaking down muscle and organs in the process. If you want to do that then your goal shouldnt be to lose weight faster, as you’re probably already losing weight optimally. And youd need to eat a hefty amount on your eating days to make up for the 48 hour fast so you dont drop weight too quickly.

Answer

Let’s say that your TDEE is 2,500 kcal/day. Over two full fasted days you would lose 2 x 2,500 / 7,700 = 0.65 kg (1.43 lb) of purest fat. Adding an optimistic 50% water loss on top of that (some of which will be regained upon refeeding) and we end up at an upper bound of 0.98 kg (2.15 lb) total loss per 48-hour cycle.

Is it worth it? Only you can tell. For me OMAD has been the battle-tested sweet spot between efficiency and practicality / lifestyle; and I’m more of a “set it and forget it” sort of person rather than someone craving novelty. But sure, in an objective physiologic sense, one weekly 48-hour fasts is by no means an extreme arrangement, assuming that the practitioner has plenty of excess fat to spare and pays attention to nutrition.