Bruce Springsteen said he does. We asked experts about the science behind the OMAD diet.
Bruce Springsteen is still going hard at 75. He played more than 100 shows in 2023 and 2024 combined. His sets routinely top three hours. And he has shows booked through next July.
How does he fuel himself through such a grueling routine?
“I’ll have a bit of fruit in the morning and then I’ll have dinner,” he told The Times of London last month. “That has kept me lean and mean.”
Though the Boss didn’t say it, eating one meal a day (sometimes called the OMAD diet) is a somewhat extreme form of intermittent fasting. Typical intermittent fasting involves strictly limiting when you eat to specific periods of time — say, only between 12 p.m. and 8 p.m., or only every other day. But the OMAD diet compresses that daily eating window into one hour, so that you get all of your calories for the day in a single sitting.
There’s limited research on the health benefits of intermittent fasting and even less on those of the OMAD diet. Here’s what we know — and don’t.
Should you follow the diet?
“One meal a day is not a good idea,” said Dr. Caroline Apovian, an obesity specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Apovian is a proponent of intermittent fasting in general, and she recommends it to many of her patients with obesity. Compared with eating plans or diets that require counting calories or cutting out many foods, intermittent fasting is a relatively simple way to control what you eat.