Editorial source note
Getting Cravings on OMAD? Here's Why...
Joe blames returning cravings on a broken eating schedule: the body times its first insulin wave to the accustomed meal, so caloric drinks and shifting meal times restart the hunger. The hibernating bear's insulin resistance "in a good way" is his proof the fasted hours can be peaceful.
Related principles
An editorial summary of views Joe expresses in the linked video. The original recording remains the primary source for his full words and context.
Detailed notes
A closer look at the ideas, examples, and reasoning Joe presents in this recording.
Cravings as a broken insulin schedule
When viewers write that cravings have returned after doing well on OMAD, Joe's diagnosis is always the same: they have stopped honoring the four-hour eating window. Caloric drinks during the fast, eating early, or shuffling meal times, he says, destabilize the insulin pattern the plan depends on.
Working from a chart, Joe lays out his anticipation model. The body is "a habit mechanism": if you ate at 4 p.m. yesterday, it prepares to eat then again, releasing a first wave of insulin roughly two and a half hours before the accustomed meal. That, in his account, is why hunger builds steadily before the window — a sign of correct adaptation, not failure, and the moment to exercise self-control until the window opens. He extends the model to blood sugar: when meals are predictable the first-phase response "gets a jump on things" and a healthy person's glucose rarely tops 140, while an unexpected meal can briefly spike higher; a reading that comes right back down, he says, is not the warning sign — one that stays up is.
The window itself is four hours by design, giving day-to-day flexibility, but Joe's rules inside it are strict: eat everything together, keep the meal short, "eat and be done with it," with a longer sitting allowed only for small eaters. Butter-and-cream coffee during the fast draws a specific rebuke — a smaller insulin response than carbs, he concedes, but still enough to "tease the metabolism," add fat, and teach the body to expect food. Changing meal times too often, he warns, effectively restarts adaptation and forfeits the benefits already earned.
The video ends on the bear. After the window closes, Joe claims, the body becomes insulin resistant "in a good way," shutting off the expectation of food just as a hibernating bear does — the bear is not lying in its cave hungry. Once adjusted, the practitioner is "metabolically very much like a real bear in hibernation," and the fasted stretch becomes the productivity period, to be enjoyed in peace rather than endured. Stability, he concludes, is the whole trick: trust the body to build the pattern, and the pattern does the work.