1 meal a day diet good or bad?

It's good if it helps you meet your calorie and nutritional goals. It's bad if it doesn't.

There is no one answer. Some people do very well on one meal a day, others don't.

It sounds like you're doing well on it, so feel free to smile and nod when people try to second-guess you.

Starvation mode the way they are using it isn't really a thing...

But actual starvation and malnutrition IS.

Your body will use itself as fuel if you aren't eating enough. How much do you weigh? Your body self-cannibalizes if you don't eat enough. So, goodbye heart, bones, liver, it's what happens when people die due to lack of food, ya know?

How much are you eating in that one meal?

SuzySunshine99 wrote: »

Icarus098 wrote: »

SuzySunshine99 wrote: »

Depending on how much weight you have to lose, 16 pounds in 6 weeks is pretty aggressive. Are you eating enough calories in that one meal?

I eat generally around 1500-1700 calories per day.

If you continue to lose at this pace, you may want to add some calories to slow things down. What is your gender, height, and weight?

Why? You don't know if this person is a male or female or how much they have to lose. If they're managing to lose weight at 1500-1700 calories per day, I think that they are fine. If they were eating 900 calories, sure. I mean really, that's only 2.6lbs per week, and if they have a lot to lose, that's not bad. Plus, it's only been 6 weeks, I'd venture a guess that a few pounds of that was likely water weight, so the OP is probably more on track with 2lbs a week.

I am not medically qualified, but wouldn’t your blood sugar level be affected by eating only once a day?

Icarus098 wrote: »

So I am pretty astounded about how everyone in life suddenly becomes an expert dietician when you mention being on a diet so I’ve decided to ask people who have real knowledge about weight loss. I have been told by many people that 1 meal a day will lead to the slowing down of my metabolism and that my body will enter “starvation mode”. I have been on a diet for the past 6 weeks and I have successfully lost 16 pounds whilst only eating 1 meal a day. Does it matter how frequently you eat in a day? Surely calories in and calories out are the only thing that matters for weight loss.

Frequency does not matter except as far as how that affects your ability to eat the right amount of calories.

People you know are probably concerned for 2 reasons:

1. It is an unfortunately common myth that you need to eat small meals throughout the day to be healthy and lose weight.
2. You have lost a lot of weight fast. If a good portion of that 16 lbs was water weight in the first couple of weeks, it's no big deal. But if you are less than 100 lbs overweight and are currently losing at a clip of 3 lbs per week, you really should eat more. As a male, 1500 calories net (calories eaten minus exercise calories) is the bare minimum.

Honestly I'm doing something similar myself - I don't eat nothing during the day, but I have my morning coffee and creamer, and currently a light snack in the afternoon (veggie/nut/protein base, try to avoid too many carbs), and then have a normal dinner where I'm not worrying about every bite.

I landed on this after examining what a) works for my lifestyle and travel b) works with my natural eating preferences and c) will still work with CICO.

It took me awhile to accept this as often IF is seen as just being another fad, and I hate fad anything LOL, but it really does work the best with my entire life, and is seeming FAR more do-able and manageable as a "normal" thing than weighing food, counting calories, meal prep, etc - which all work, but NOT with my lifestyle.