Eating the same food everyday is becoming a popular trend.
It means preparing the same breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the week. Despite the blandness of eating the same foods over and over again, there are a few good reasons for the popularity of this approach.
- It’s easy to track. Counting your calories isn’t always easy, and with each new recipe comes new calculations. If you eat the same thing each day, on the other hand, you only need to make your calculations once. It’s easy to craft a diet that meets your caloric needs.
- It’s cost-effective. If you have chicken, beans and mixed veggies for dinner each night, then you can buy those items in bulk - thereby saving a significant chunk of change at the grocery store (versus buying individual or smaller portioned items).
- It saves time. You don’t have to worry about learning new recipes, wasting time experimenting with new foods or researching nutritional information. And because you’re preparing the same foods each day, you’ll likely become very efficient at it.
While this approach may work for some individuals, I have a few concerns.
For one, there don’t seem to be any real, scientifically-proven health advantages to eating the same foods. In fact, quite the contrary. it’s extremely difficult to prepare a breakfast, lunch and dinner that will meet 100% of all your nutrition needs. Some foods are high in Vitamin A. Others have lots of heart-healthy unsaturated fats. Unless you’ve given a lot of time and thought to your set meal plan - or unless it’s prepared by a professional - it’s unlikely to provide all the nutrients you need. As such, it’s very likely that nutritional deficiencies may result from eating the same foods each day.
Second, I think this approach reduces food preparation to something of an assembly line. The focus becomes on efficiency, rather than honoring your body with delicious and healthy foods prepared with time, energy, effort and love. I value my body, and I want to treat it as something special. I want to spoil my body. If that means learning a few new recipes and experimenting with new flavors, then so be it. That’s all part of the fun.
I don’t mind spending a little extra time on my body. After all, it’s the greatest instrument I’ll ever own.
What do you think? Do you think eating the same foods each day makes a lot of sense? Let me know in the comments below.
About Davey Wavey
Completely agreed on getting a variety in your diet. It’s really hard to eat the same foods and get 100% of the RDA in every nutrient, but as long as it balances out throughout the week, it’ll be optimum. That and each foods have their poisons (even vegetables); getting a varied diet helps you minimize building up too much of one kind.
I love eating!
Therefore preparing various different delicious meals is a great way to relax and make me feel good.
I don’t wanna loose my love for food. I’d always want variety and could never eat the same thing every day. Plus I agree in thinking it cannot probably be healthy in the long run.
If I had the time and energy after work to start making different types of food every day I would probably do it. But reality is sadly that when I get home I’m usually starving and need to get food in me fast. I’d rather experiment with food when I have the day off and can more easily plan my day. But when you have work, plus evening training it’s hard to get the time to cook!
But it’s always good to find new easy recipes on meals to switch it up 🙂
While it is easy (eating the same thing) it gets extremely boring…I’ve tried it…hate it. I think one of the biggest hurdles in altering what you eat, as pointed out by Davey, is re-calculating what you’re eating. There are several free websites and smartphone applications that can help with easing the pain, so long as you’re willing to put even a minor amount of effort into it. Since I’m a self-proclaimed geek, I prefer the smartphone avenue and use a free app called “MyFitnessPal” (Android…might be available for iOS/WP7/8). The database is huge, allows for scanning of barcodes on what you’re about to eat/make, and even allows for creating your own custom “recipes” based on ingredients. It’s certainly not a silver bullet, but can help you watch what you eat much easier. I know it has helped me tremendously to know when the “OK, you’re done eating for the day” time arrives.
Unfortunately pressure from modern life styles has been encouraging some people to look for easy and convenient options.
Easier options may sound very tempting but not always ideal as Davey wisely discussed in his article.
To start with I would find boring eating the same food everyday.
Another point to consider is our priorities. Do we really want to have a healthier life style?
Moreover, learning to enjoy every moment and focus in one task at a time would increase the pleasure of learning and cooking healthy, easy and nutritious food to nurture and feed our precious bodies.
Furthermore, if we wish to help our planet, we may consider using local and seasonal ingredients which may not be available throughout the year and everywhere.
Just some ideas of mine on the subject.
May we all be healthier,
J
I visited San Diego recently and a lot of people I saw on the beach had amazing bodies, also in Hillcrest were a lot of hot guys and I wonder if they ate the same thing everyday so they could keep their fat rate low enough to be as cut and muscular as they were.
I guess they do. I might be wrong.
I often eat the same things for 2-3 days in a row. That way I get a balance of economy and time efficiency with good nutrition.
i do the same-it makes it easy-to count calories-i can manage better.its boring-but it can work.
Interesting post as always Davey. I recall reading a couple of years back that eating the same food repeatedly was actually a lot like muscle memory — your body got used to the food. If I recall correctly, this study said that eating novel foods opened up your whole digestive tract to “sample” what you’ve taken-in, resulting in more energy stored as fat.
But I could be wrong in my recollection of this study. And I wholeheartedly agree that “variety is the spice of life” and based on what we know about nutrition, it would be quite difficult if not impossible to cover all the bases without changing it up.
I really need to loss waite and i have no lidea how to pleace help
I was just wondering, what if you are a vegetarian? I personally have not been eating red meat and have cut back on poultry and fish. What do you suggest I conist my meals of?
You must also remember that not everyone has as much free time as you. Your health and your body are your job. For others, those two things often come second.
like you wrote the e-book in it or something.
http://cumacebancom.blogspot.com