People Who Eat the Same Meal Every Day | Hacker News Reader

People Who Eat the Same Meal Every Day

theatlantic.com

320 pointssergeant3330 comments

When my daughter was born during the recession, my wife and I went through a stretch where money was pretty tight. One obvious expense to cut was eating out for lunch every weekday. So I switched to bringing in lunch.

For several months, I brought the same thing: granola, yogurt, and chopped melon. I love food and love variety, so I was really surprised to discover that I simply didn't get tired of it or resentful. Every day, I looked forward to having it.

Every now and then I would have a bowl of canned soup instead, but that was literally the only variety I had. Like others in the article, I found the peacefulness and simplicity of not having to stress out about where to go for lunch more than made up for the monotony. In fact, knowing all day what I was going to have for lunch led to a greater anticipation of it.

I think this worked for me because I was only doing this for lunch and not for every meal of the day. So this actually increased the meta-variety of my eating: dinner meals were varied and lunch meals were not. So I got to experience both repetition and novelty.

It was a really interesting experience that I'd encourage others to try. In general, I think repetition and ritual tends to be undervalued in Western culture, but has always been an important part of the human experience.

> So this actually increased the meta-variety of my eating

Wait... did you just take the second derivative of your lunch?

I knew that food could lead to calculus, but I thought it was just a dental hygiene issue.

Keep taking derivatives and you'll end up with rice krispies...

Turtle soup all the way down...

I got your joke. :)

"Higher order calculus over open food spaces"

Wouldn't that be the third derivative, change in changes, heteroscedasticity?

that's where the nutrients are

"I found the peacefulness and simplicity of not having to stress out about where to go for lunch"

very often in life, we mistaken boredom for peacefulness. a simple and stress-free life can be just as, if not more, rewarding then the hectic one we leave behind.

Mistaking boredom for peacefulness is like mistaking a placebo for a cure; if the net effect is what you’re going for, it doesn’t matter.

Vaguely dissonant with username but I like it. :)

As an aside, I save ~$1300 a year by bringing in lunch, and ~$550 per year in breakfast, in addition to controlling portions and nutrition. If I had been doing that for the past 10 years I could buy a new car by now, or put a pretty decent chunk into retirement. I now find it absolutely bizarre how many people at work go out for lunch.

As an aside, I could save $XXXX a year by having a roommate/living in a worse house/having a crappier car/never going out for drinks/etc. The list goes on. There is an incredible number of things your average first world worker could give up to save money per year. The reason people spend money on these things is that they spend 40+ hours a week working so they CAN afford to spend those unnecessary dollars a year on things they enjoy, that enrich their lives. Otherwise we would all have plenty of money in the bank while we live in a 5x5 concrete cell and literally only go to work/sleep. Some things are not about maximizing profit.

Sure. It's worth a consideration though if that specific thing is one that's actually something that enriches your life, or just something you're doing because it's what you've always done. (personally, the best places have been those where a group cooks their own lunch every day, but that's somewhat rare)

I often hear my co-workers complain about their bland green smoothies or salads without enough walnuts. Meanwhile, for lunch I prepare moroccan lamb stew, chicken cordon bleu with pasta, szechuan tofu and green bean stir fry, ham and gruyere with tomato soup, pear and blue cheese salad with rotisserie chicken, loaded sweet potato with curried fried cauliflour, and quiche lorraine, among others.

I'm not saying nobody should eat out, but to do it every day just seems wasteful. And I find cooking to be quite a bit more enriching than takeout.

They spend money, you spend time. Maybe they find your expense wasteful.

This is what I do. I can cheap food every day for lunch for about $6 and longingly look at, but not purchase, nice food (like salmon) for $10-12. Or I can cook and bring my own nice food for $2-6. It's kind of a no-brainer.

In my experience, there is a good chunk of people who have to eat out every day because they have no time for cooking, because they work 40h/week and have a one hour commute (, to pay for the lunches and the car).

I wondered the same thing (how do so many people buy lunch daily) but concluded - at the time and the context I was observing it - that there were two main factors.

Number 1 was social. People went out for lunch in groups, and it was an "enforced" break in the day. It's a cultural issue that can be hard to replicate for "lunch bringers" in some places. Not so fun to eat alone in a drab lunch room if your friends and peers are down the street having pizza, I guess.

Number 2 was time, or at least the perception of time. Tech people (in my context) tend to work long hours and whether you are trying to maintain a social life or bring up a couple of kids, once you add that to work hours there isn't a ton left. More than one person I know had commented that they didn't find the time to make and bring lunches that didn't leave them feeling left out. It's easy to bring a crappy sandwich, harder to bring something you really enjoy. At least for them.

> Number 1 was social.

This is what I liked while working in HP. We had a canteen where pretty much everybody went. You could buy a number of simple cheaper meals, a fancy expensive meal, or bring your own thing. Everybody could still sit together.

Yes, I think there is a different dynamic when your company scale runs to "I work on campus". In smaller offices, particularly in dense cities or "business parks", I think it's more common to go to the restaurants nearby. Those are really not open to people bringing food.

Both of these match my experience. When I was living off the wages of a young intern, I was working or learning almost every waking hour, and sleeping on a sheet on the floor because I didn't own furniture. But, whenever he group would go out to lunch, I'd go, for the socialization -- it was very consciously the only thing other than rent&utilities that I spent money on. (Fortunately, we had some amazing strip mall restaurants nearby that weren't too expensive.) When the group didn't go to lunch, I'd usually get by with whatever food I could scavenge, because I was so busy, and felt like I had to always be in the office. I hadn't yet even tried to figure out how to make and bring a lunch.

Number 3 might be exercise. If you live in a cold weather city, you can't eat outside all year (i.e. bringing lunch and walk to a park and eating). Walking to and from lunch might be 3,000 steps.

Absolutely no shame at all in ordering takeout for lunch every single day as long as you can afford it and it brings you joy. The goal of personal finance isn't to die with the highest score, its to organize your money to make you the most secure and the most happy, both now and in the future.

It's really good for the economy to go out for lunch. You create a lot of jobs by doing that. If you're mindful of where you eat you can also support immigrant and minority owned businesses.

It's good for the LOCAL economy. Eating expensive lunch in a restaurant will increase local spending, but reduce your other consumption by the same amount. You create jobs by letting people work for you, and you get means to make them do it by working yourself. Nothing special about going out for lunch in that regard.

And if everyone chooses to eat cheap lunch, we could all just work less, and the system would be balanced again ;).

Maybe there is more to life than buying a new car every ten years? Maybe some people enjoy variety and a nice proper good sit down meal? I am really NOT questioning your choices. Totally cool if it works for you. But please don't call people who live a different life style "absolutely bizarre"

I used to do this and I did grow resentful of it, after about 6 months. I've switched to having the same thing for a week and cycling between 4 options. It's hit that sweet spot of variety and familiarity for me.

Meta-variety is a novel concept. Perhaps we should look out for that more in our lives.

I believe the statisticians would call this heteroscedasticity. But meta-variety certainly easier to remember ;)

That's weird. Never heard the word heteroscedasticity before and now I see it in two different HN threads within the hour. (the other being https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19337466).

See further the Baader-Meinhof Effect. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effec...

Meta-variety is like the variance of variances.

Heteroscedasticity is like changing variance.

Nice! I hadn't thought about that.

Right, so this is like having autocorrelation, right? Or at least having a confounding variable correlated to your error term?

Perhaps it shares a root with serendipity?

Both seem related to a kind of intelligent mindfulness.

I'm so glad as I read what you wrote. I also long have hated the tedium of choosing where to go, actually going, not squandering finite time fucking around with ordering when coworkers want to chat up the alternatives, when I'm lucky enough, or persistent enough, to have a job I like which I'd prefer to be doing.

I quit eating out for lunch because I got tired of spending 20 minutes hungry, trying to decide where to go, then half the time paying money for food I didn't really want to eat in the first place.

You might like soylent.

There is definitely something to this. I've been having a breakfast smoothie/shake every morning for about 4 years now- while the recipe changes a little every once in a while, I absolutely love the predictability of the macros, calories, and satiety I get from it. Perfect start to the day for me.

I've had that thought about a simple brazilian meal as well: I don't get tired of rice, beans and a steak.

Ditto here. Been overseas for a while, but foun a rice and beans that taste like ours, plus steak/chicken/mistura.

I wish I could have pingado (espresso with milk) and pão francês na chapa (a grilled bread with margarine or cream cheese). Dinner would be the left overs of lunch, of just some salad, bread, turkey... never get tired of it.

the worst part of my experience in costa rica was eating the same meal of rice, beans, plantains, salad, and a mild and sometimes dry protein, none of which i dislike on occasion.

eating the same meal twice in a row makes me not want it again for weeks. there are also very few foods that i won't eat, so maybe that's correlated with the love of variety.

(variety in) food is such a simple pleasure for me that i guess i will never understand this behavior.

Repetition is the only thing that creates change.

No one on r/fitness or /fit/ is going to call you crazy for eating the same thing each day.

I have a ton of variety in my diet.

But when you're a vegetarian (as I was), to maintain a reasonably nutritious diet requires some repetition. For example, getting certain protein and nutrients in one meal so you don't have to think about it in the others.

I'm no longer a strict vegetarian (just mostly), but the diet habits I learned mean that my overall diet is better, lower calorie.

I now think it's important for EVERYONE to do strict vegetarianism. Not for ethical or environmental concerns, but simply because it forces you to think about what you're eating and to read labels (and thus learn that the "vegetarian" tacos you're eating have gelatin (meat product) in the sour cream).

In addition, being a strict vegetarian in a sustainable way requires learning about what your body requires.

After a few months (or however long it requires to build a stable, nutritious diet), you'll be extremely well informed. Of course, you could also just read all this stuff on various articles, but trial by fire is an excellent way to learn.

I'm vegetarian and have been since I was 12. There isn't all that much repetition in my diet. I don't eat that much 'American' food, though, because 'American' vegetarian options can be pretty limited. I just eat a ton of Indian and Mexican and Thai and Chinese and Mediterranean and other foods.

Gelatin is godlike http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/gelatin.shtml

I felt kind of dizzy at first - your daughter... the 1930s?! Then I realised which recession you meant.

Not which recession - you're mixing up recession and depression.

I'm all kinds of mixed up.

Figuring out where to eat lunch causes you stress? Much easier than figuring out where your pregnant wife wants to eat. Now that is stressful!

Glad you were able to stick to bringing lunch. I always end up being too lazy and enjoy the break from the office or home office. If I don’t have variety I will become pretty cranky.

> Figuring out where to eat lunch causes you stress?

Reaching consensus on where to eat with my group of lunchmates definitely caused stress, especially after we'd all gotten mostly burned out on the nearby options.

I recently read that autistic people often eat without much variety. I wonder if that also holds for people with mildly autistic traits.

> One obvious expense to cut > was eating out for lunch > every weekday

Honestly amazed this is the default position for anyone. What situation of living prompts this?

If you work with a bunch of people who commute a long way into work and do not cook and you want to fit in with your coworkers. Generally I would bring something in but be available for lunch because it's nice if you like your coworkers to hang out outside of work sometimes. This goes against my instincts for frugality. This was long before company provided lunches and the like, though, I've worked at places back then that were large enough to have on site cafeterias and we still went out most of the time. Also might be an age thing because we were all in our 20's and the veterans at those companies almost universally brought in their lunch.

Cooking quickly becomes a bad time/value proposition when you're cooking for one, so that's part of the equation. And some of us value the enjoyment of many good meals over say, having a newer car. I planned to include daily lunches in my budget before I even left college (couldn't afford it at the time). I don't regret it one bit.

I used to cycle commute everyday and would vary the route from 12-60kms. Where I live is very hot in summer and wet in winter. So a shower was needed when I arrived at work. I preferred to not carry a backpack or have a pannier on my bike, so every fortnight I would drive to work and drop off work clothes for the next couple of weeks.

This also meant I would go out for lunch each day as I didn't want to carry food with me on my commute. The cost savings of riding to work vs driving and paying for parking meant I was ahead. If I took public transport and brought lunch from home it would have worked out slightly cheaper but taken 30mins longer each way.

Sure I could have carried lunch with me on my cycle commute but and saved more money, but then I would have enjoyed the ride less. I figure I would still be ahead compared to people who don't cycle and pay for gym classes/memberships.

Food available at the office or paid enough to be able to do so. Very common in the major SV companies.

When I was in grad school, there was a huge collection of food carts right outside the building. You could get a large meal of virtually any cuisine for $5-6.

As a single person who liked variety and worked a lot, it was a slam dunk: fast, tasty, and relatively cheap.

Many large companies have a cafeteria on site.

Nearly 9 years ago I started a job where (tldr) it wasn't practical to go out for lunch most if the time. Since then I've eaten sandwiches for lunch nearly every day at lunch. With some variations, but not a lot recently. Down sides: I do sometimes miss the chance to get out of the office for a bit. Upsides: have saved a bunch of money and lost about 30 pounds of weight without really even trying. Also I only need about 20 minutes for lunch each day (+shopping once a week, which doesn't take long since I mostly eat the same thing).

I lived on the streets for a time as a teen. When I got off and had my first real place to live, I couldn't afford much. I had potatoes, butter (was like heaven) soy sauce and mustard. So that was my dinner for months.

My co-workers thought I was crazy when I microwaved a potato and put soy sauce and mustard on it. I simply didn't have anything else.

Later I got pickles and cheese (the greatest thing I had ever had up till then). But I was so grateful for having something the thought of feel anything negative about it didn't even cross my mind. I couldn't afford snacks, so that was my meal, my only food for hours before and after.

I think so many "problems" society has today is because we are all a bunch of rich snobs. And I have to remind myself to remember how grateful I was when I was really poor. I never want to lose that gratitude, it's protection against all kinds of mental/emotional problems.

Even though it must have been very difficult, living a harder life seems to have given you a super power to transcend the silly little things that everyone else seems to care so much about.

Personally I find I get wrapped up in the little things quite often, and only after do I really understand I wasted so much effort on something meaningless. I'm not suggesting trauma tourism, but I am interested in a way to broaden my horizons and understand this mindset. Is there anything you'd suggest one can do?

The problem is that this experience wears off over time. I have to re-evaluate my problems even today. I think that if I hit extreme poverty again and went through this I would get something like a booster/refresher from the experience.

But, I do teach my kids how to appreciate things by simply not giving them too much to begin with. And I also intentionally choose, on a daily basis, to take less than I want (food control), put the music a tiny bit lower than I want (protect my ears), etc...

When I get angry at something, I say to myself, "what is the truth here?" And if I am honest, most of the time the problem is really me. When I see that, I then force myself to evaluate what is really going on, and I look really hard for the feeling I want to have.

One of the first things I did to start this was to remind myself there are people I have met with far less than I have and were happier. Pictures of kids in Africa with toy cars made out of rusty wire. One kid looked 18, and he was posing quite pleased with his creation.

I feel like the biggest battle I face now is complacency. So if you can choose to remove things from your life that give you pleasure, for the express purpose of changing an environment that fights against you making progress, then do it.

A couple weeks ago I quit coffee "again". My thought process is "choose something really, really good, not what your heart wants." I really like coffee, but I over do it and I get sick eventually. But I really enjoy hot chocolate (organic sugar, homemade syrup), and I can drink it all day and not have any bad side effects.

The real super power is built a little at a time, with practice. At first, I just "delayed" having coffee. Then later, I took less coffee than I want. All the while saying "this isn't good for you, you are going to make a better choice". Not lying to myself, but also not making an excuse.

Encourage yourself to always face the truth, that is the start. Then if you say something to yourself, that is a very real action. Eventually you will do something outside your head. Something small, something doable. Keep doing that every day and you can change anything.

I flog myself by hiking and running long distances. You gain a bit of toughness when pushing yourself to the limit (exhausted and a bit hurt), while in a thunderstorm, and you are still 1 hour away from finishing. (And while we are talking about food. Intermittent fasting is a similar experience. Going hungry for a while makes you appreciate food in a different way.)

I agree, I've had the same experience with exercise and food.

I consistently eat one meal a day right now. The reason is that I simply don't need that much, and I am really hungry by dinner time. But if I want to eat lunch I do.

The "appreciate food" angle was what really helped get into intermittent fasting. The fact that my food tasted _so_ much better (the same food as always) made me appreciate feeling hungry for an hour or more before meals.

If I am hungry, I know full well that dinner is going to be good, no matter what it is.

Thanks for the reminder on this topic. I have taken a year off of running as an experiment for weight control. I found food intake was the primary mover for weight control, not exercise. I've lost a lot of weight with no exercise. Looking forward to start running again this spring. :) (got a little giddy from the reminder your comment gave me)

>I found food intake was the primary mover for weight control, not exercise

Excellent point which people seem to not understand. The amount of calories you burn running an hour can be equal to a very little amount of food - one candy bar.

Naturally ignoring the fitness benefits of exercise a small reduction in calories can equal a lot of heavy exercise.

The expectation of food after fasting is such a great feeling–better than the act of eating itself.

To me, this feeling comes from knowing where the bottom is. This is different from person to person. For me, the bottom is being beaten by my drug dealer in a run down building with nowhere to go. I have never visited this place, but I know people who have. The further from the bottom you are, the more you get to live it up.

This is an important lesson, learn from other people's mistakes.

The things I will absolutely not screw up again, ever, are the things I really, really suffered from. But then I could apply this to seeing how other people destroyed their lives, and use the pain I already have to protect me from those mistakes too.

Was it Ben Franklin that said "experience is the worst way to learn"? (I think it's in reference to making bad decisions)

There are meditation practices that focus on gratitude. "Loving kindness" is one such practice that is very accessible to a beginner. When in the right state of mind, this can be a powerful and moving experience.

I've been lucky enough never to be in a situation like yours (not having the money for food that isn't in the vicinity of the cheapest), but since the first time my college dorm had a kitchen I've been making an effort to keep food costs low (with a more recent additional shift away from meat), and I've come to a similar realization. Even when the option for something more is always there, keeping my standard meals simple (currently, miscellaneous-root-vegetable stew, or rice-and-beans, or half an acorn squash with raisins) means that on when I occasionally have reason to go for something fancier (once a month or so), the thing that would have gotten boring ages ago for some people (a turkey Reuben from a deli) is really good (and still much cheaper than a comparable step-up would be from a higher baseline).

Remind yourself of this lesson in the future, as in my experience, these feelings can be dulled over time or through neglect.

I have also spent time cooking a specific meal (the same one) over and over again at home tweaking it to get it to be as good, or better, than the restaurant, so I can have the same experience without the expense.

But also, it's funny how simple foods can be satisfying. I've been around some really rich people that are total food snobs and I feel a little sorry for them. They can't enjoy homemade or simple foods.

Thoughtful! Also thanks for the reminder about microing potatoes, it totally works (and tastes something between boiled and baked).

My pleasure, I do wonder if there's something to be concerned about microwaving food... a concern for another day.

I found too that if I put a bowl/cover over the potato, it steams it as well, and cooks faster and is more moist.

Thanks for that. It brought back some memories!

One point though, looking back at both those phases of my life, I noticed that I became aware of my snobbery only after I could afford everything, not while I was going through the tough times.

Yah, that is my experience as well. And it wasn't right away, it crept up on me slowly, and it was hard to come back from a little. But I knew it was from the old saying "a luxury once tasted becomes a necessity."

I absolutely love your sentiments. hug

Gratitude makes you a boring person and a boring life story. At least that's what I am (nobody).

FWIW humans need more than potato & soy sauce in their diet to be healthy long term, so at least for that part wanting more doesn't seem like snobbery.

(You can subsist on potatoes, and you can even do it for a while- but for example young children develop deformities if they lack certain vitamins, which potatoes do not have)

If you haven't ever lived at subsistence level you may not understand what you are facing in reality. Food is food, better to have a deformity than to be dead.

There are tons of greens in everyone's backyard in America right now that you can eat. Half the weeds in your yard are editable and would fill in all the missing nutrients.

Education is the problem here, maybe not so much resources. (unless famine?)

But also, when I eat the same meal every day, I do feel a certain hunger for other things after awhile, so I don't disagree about nutrients.

I think we are talking past each other. I was just trying to say that wanting a variety of food, is not a sign of a greedy opulent society.

I've not had to rummage food from dumpsters, but I've been broke & eaten a nutritionally inadequate diet as a result, and I saw what it did to me.

>I think we are talking past each other. I was just trying to say that wanting a variety of food, is not a sign of a greedy opulent society.

I don't disagree at all, I think everyone wants some variety, or at the very least the ability to choose.

It seemed your comment was worded unclearly, which may be why the down votes...

You can't subsist on greens, they're 8 calories a cup (47 grams). You would need to eat thirty pounds a day of lettuce out of your back yard. That's polluted urban soil so it would probably poison you whilst you starved.

I was merely pointing out that probably a few bites of greens (not covered in chemicals, where do you live?) has enough vitamins to stave off scurvy and a host of other nutritional deficiencies... not feed you outright.

Really cheap nutritionally complete diets; potatoes and milk, rice and beans, peanut butter and bread. Note that these are all ~carbohydrates and protein.

You need a degree of fats in your diet for fat soluble vitamins to be included too.

One of my favorite meals is a plain hotdog bun with yellow mustard.

Nostalgia from childhood? Or are you currently not doing very well? There's more places to find help than you can imagine.

Let me know if you stuck, and I can post some resources.

Yes, as we get richer we lose something. We lose the ability to like those simpler things. A 17 year old kid loves his clapped out 1.2 Clio at least as much as you love your BMW Super Truck X Series.

So true. I sold my exotics and drive cars I always wanted as a kid. Its more fun, and cheaper to boot. I can't help but smile every time I see one of my cheap little cars.

Which cars are they?

I eat the same 3 meals a day, 5-6 days a week. I spent a couple years refining what meals give me the nutrition I need, with enough energy to code, and help me keep weight off. When I stop this routine, I put on weight fast, so I try to keep jobs that let me work from home and keep my routine. I will meal-prep 4 days at a time, consume those 4 days worth of meals, then have a day where I take my wife out to lunch, buy the groceries for the next 4 days, and skip dinner.

I fully recognize the non-typical nature of this routine, but if you find something that works for you, go with it.

I worked at a startup that tried to optimize the nutrients and micronutrients including synergistic and antagonistic components and it was pretty hard task. A blogpost regarding the recipies and your considerations would be interesting.

How do you know that you're getting enough of all the different micronutrients? Humans can eat a deficient diet for a long time and not notice serious side effects, so I'm wondering if you have some kind of good way of figuring out whether the different micronutrient quotas are fulfilled properly.

You are 100% correct. I did get vitamin deficient a few years ago, and worked with doctors to identify the deficiencies and resolve them, and have continued testing to make sure I'm doing OK. This routine is a result of that experience more than anything else. That is also one reason I go out to eat every few days - to get some variety into the mix.

>This routine is a result of that experience more than anything else

And I would just like to add everyone's body is a little different. People may have different level / type of deficiencies, and for me that is Vitamin B. So I guess you cant really have meal that works for you and works for everyone else. It is important for everyone trying this to do it themselves and test it out with your body. Not to mention you get to think about how to cook your favourite food.

I personally did something similar for 6 months, but due to different circumstances I can no longer do meal prep. During that time I had an idea about making a web app that help you select your meal prep. You input foods that you like and loath, input regional location so that we know what you can get and and not, and price range, how much it would cost per meal ( Not everyone is rich and well off ) It will hopefully have a List of Meal prep that you may like, along with instructions and where to buy those ingredients.

Did the resolution involve taking an OTC multivitamin? Please ignore if I'm prying.

I'd be super curious to hear what the 3 meals are.

My opinion as someone who's had extremely restrictive diets in order to lose weight: People overthink this. As you've said, our bodies are pretty good at making due with what they get. Aim for a baseline: protein plus some vegetables, some of which are dark green; and then just occasionally indulging in some cravings will probably cover the rest.

I'm in my late 40s, and I was shocked to find out several years ago that I'm the happiest when I just eat meats/proteins and veggies. While I like fruit, it generally makes me feel crappy, almost as bad as with processed carbs. It helped that I also "discovered" sauteed greens, which really helps boost many of my meals now.

How does anyone? I have plenty of coworkers who eat fast food for every lunch and not much better or more diverse for dinner. Certainly they are not getting all the different micronutrients?

Fast food often uses fortified ingredients. Perhaps the most common is fortified flour. Some chains use iodized salt. Preservatives like ascorbic acid or vitamin E effectively provide fortification.

Other than a lack of fiber and ease of consuming too many calories, one could do much worse than fast food--McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc. I think it's easier to get it wrong using a so-called whole foods diet. The ingredient diversity of fast foods makes it more fail-safe, particularly if you're disposed to repetitively eating the same kinds of foods.

I mean, obviously you can't subsist on french fries, but if the issue is laziness, lack of time, access to good groceries, or lack of money, it can make sense. It's difficult to beat a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger for dietary money-value!

Granted, the removal of trans fats has helped. And note that I'm not arguing a whole foods diet can't be better. I'm not recommending a fast food diet ;) But we sometimes underestimate the effort involved in following a good diet and discount the benefits of a good-enough diet.

I do something similar and after 7 years I discovered I was severely Vitimin D deficient. Thanks to an article that was posted recently about UV not penetrating glass.

Vitamin D deficiency has a lot to do with your climate. It's not realistic to get all of your vitamin D from food no matter what. I'm guessing you live in Seattle or some other place where you forget what the sun looks like sometimes?

Do you experience symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency?

You can use a tool like cronometer.com, at least that's what I started using when I started eating plant-based

> How do you know that you're getting enough of all the different micronutrients?

How do you?

The simple hedge of eating a variety of foods, plus medical wisdom around simple things like iodine that have eliminated certain deficiencies.

By definition you don't need micronutrients often, so you don't need to eat a lot of them every day, which is what makes the variety scheme work.

Use the app Chronometer to track micronutrients

Do you have a blog post or something that goes into detail about your routine? It sounds interesting.

I don't have it posted, but it isn't that complex, so I can give a quick rundown here:

Breakfast - 2 eggs, scrambled with generous amounts of mushrooms and spinach, and a little cheese tossed in.

Lunch - Veggie mix that I chop up all together every few days - green peppers, pasilla peppers, green onion, yellow onions, eggplant, jicama, cauliflower, and whatever other root veggies looked good at the store - turnips, rutabagas, and such things. I stir-fry them with lime juice, tomato paste, fish sauce, turmeric, coriander, ginger, and cayenne pepper. At the end, I add a little coconut milk, and it ends up being a decent approximation of a red curry.

Dinner - baked chicken wings with some hot sauce.

> and a little cheese tossed in

Or as I like it call it, salt. ;-)

huh. Seems both tasty and healthy. Well done.

I'm not sure about the fish sauce or coconut milk but you need some fat in there to allow the nutrients from all the plants to be carried into the body. You might consider throwing an ounce or two of chicken in there. Otherwise most of it goes to waste.

Coconut milk is extremely fatty.

Does your wife also eat the same meals? Do you eat together for breakfast and dinner?

Article doesn't mention it, but I suspect one benefit is weight control.

If you eat something different every day, it's hard to be mindful of consuming too many calories. Especially given the high levels of fructose corn syrup in just about everything.

You can go broke even with a high paying job if you don't manage expenses. You can also get fat eating all the right foods but in too much quantity.

I lost around 60 pounds nine years ago and the main way I keep it off is by eating roughly the same thing every weekday. I've "tuned" it over time to keep me full and avoid overeating and snacking.

Sounds like my story too (lost 25kg about 7yrs ago and kept it off). I generally rotate on a 1-week cycle. The only daily rules I follow are (1) never eat noodles more than once a day, and (2) eat some green vegetable/s once a day. I also never keep food in my apartment to easily avoid snacking, so some days when the weather's bad I'll only eat twice. When I go to an eatery (restaurant or canteen stall), I usually have the same meal every time, but there's about 10 different places I eat at, so I'm making the choice of what to eat when I choose which eatery to go to.

Yeah I developed a stable of foods that I knew the calories of and rotated through those, made my calorie tracking easy.

This is an insightful point, and has been demonstrated in several studies [1] - limiting variety simplifies and bounds the food decisions you have to regularly make.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.10...

I wonder if you're less susceptible to glutinous desires too. If you find a food really tasty but don't know when you'll have it again, then you might be tempted to eat more than you should. But if it's daily meal that just tastes fine, then it's not that tempting to overeat, I suspect.

That was what I did when I was trying to lose weight. I ate subway sandwiches (different variety without cheese) for 2 years - every evening. Mornings were just a plate full of fruits and lunch was variety of typical foods but small portions. Combined with running thrice a week + Muay Thai, I went from 82kgs to 62kgs in three months and stayed around that for a long time.

It is hard to keep up though - I eventually stopped the eating/exercise regime and gained a significant portion of the lost weight back.

In "The 4-Hour Body" Tim Ferriss recommends eating the same meal [from Chipolte!] every day as part of his "slow carb" diet.

I have no idea how long he sticks to his own advice though.

Approximately until it stops selling.

This is key. It’s a lot easier to lose/maintain weight if you eat the same things.

I care a lot more about being a healthy weight than eating a variety of foods.

I've eaten the same breakfast, and the same Sweetgreen salad for lunch (in 6-12 months streaks) for the past 5 years. The reason it works so well for me is the reduction in needing to make decisions every day, and feeling bad about having made the wrong choices.

I like this because this is in a part of my day where I need to focus on work, and being productive, and don't need to be distracted by food decisions.

I also LOVE food - so dinner, and weekends, are times where I actually love making decisions about where to eat, what to eat.

What is your breakfast, if you don't mind to share?

not OP but I've eaten two eggs on toast every morning for a lot of my life

For some time now I've been tempted to start eating eggs on a toast for breakfast daily so I'm curious: has this impacted your bad cholesterol?

The notion that dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol is outdated, and is not supported by evidence (with some exceptions, e.g. for diabetics). Modern nutrition advisories no longer recommend limiting cholesterol intake.

Not OP, but I've been eating 3-4 eggs (usually hard- or soft-boiled, but occasionally scrambled with bacon or sausage, never with bread/toast though) almost every weekday morning for the past 5 years, and all my recent bloodwork has shown cholesterol levels in the healthy range.

I never had it measured and since I've been doing it since I was about 14 I'm not sure I could judge cause and effect.

I'm on a low carb diet for both losing weight and better budget. I've tried so many things over the years, but having a consistent routine every day seems to be the easiest for me to follow. I've found that having a "yes" list is WAY easier to manage mentally than having a "no" list.

For those interested in my diet plan, I eat the following:

7am 3 cups of water followed by 3 cups of coffee.

10am 1 cup bone broth + 1 protein shake if I'm still hungry

12pm 2 cups of salad + 1 avocado + 2 eggs + 1 keto cookie (Fat Snax, they're delicious)

4pm 1 protein bar (Keto Collagen Protein Bar) or 1 30g of Macadamia Nuts

6pm 500 calories of meat + 2 cups of salad + 1 ChocoZero (Keto Chocolate)

This is about 1,800 calories a day which puts me at a steady pace to lose about 1 lb of fat a week assuming I don't cheat.

I really like this diet plan because I can bulk buy most things at Costco and the snacks on Amazon. The best hack has been pre-packed hard boiled eggs, that's reduced my lunch into a 2 min prep for just the advocado and putting everything together. My lunch requires no meal prep so I only have to think about dinner. And I've reduced dinner down to just a meat which I can cook up in a bunch of different ways twice or 3 times a week.

It has helped me save money, save time, keep fit. Great for post-holidays.

What about those mornings when you want to have a 4th cup of water?

lol that's just to jump start my body before drinking coffee (which dehydrates). I drink almost a gallon a day right now outside of my jump start.

>his is about 1,800 calories a day which puts me at a steady pace to lose about 1 lb of fat a week assuming I don't cheat.

A pound of fat is 3500 calories, so you've really got to be hitting a 500 calorie a day deficit to get there. 1800 cal a day seems a bit high to achieve a lb of weight loss per week (2k/day recommended intake), unless of course you're very tall in which case your baseline might be 2300 cal.

2k/day might be the total caloric expenditure for the average woman. I’m a somewhat active 190 pound man and my daily maintenance calories average between 2600 and 3500 (depending on how much I surf).

You could buy 20 eggs, boil all at once and keep them in the fridge for weeks. Just a thought ;)

Yeah I did that before. But I'm super lazy, so I found that buying a bunch of hard boiled eggs pre-packed into packets of 2 by Costco was just that little bit easier.

Keto diets are sketchy science at best. I can't believe anyone still falls for it.

I think you should test what works best for your body.

I actually don't do strict keto, I have a lot of protein in my meals, way more than I should if I were on keto alone.

But I've tried balanced, low fat, high fat, etc. And I have found this works best for my body day-to-day. I think that if you don't feel good, then its ultimately unsustainable and bad for you and that should be your ultimate gauge.

You can't "fall" for a metabolic state. While there are plenty of people pushing faux keto diets as a means to sell you something you don't need, putting yourself into a metabolic state is a biological reality.

Why do you think so? It sounds as well studied already.

I agree. Keto is the most dangerous dietary trend today.

Honestly I think this is partially why Blue Apron failed...they overestimated how many people desire variety in dinner choices.

Someone build a blue apron except for ingredients for weekly meal prep.

> they overestimated how many people desire variety in dinner choices.

And here I thought it was because they are pretty seriously overpriced, not to mention environmentally questionable.

For me it was mostly price, but also work. If I'm going to pay that much for food, I don't want to have to work too hard to build the meal.

Their marketing seemed geared to people who wanted to learn to cook something nicer than the basic meal. You have a nice recipe card and all the right ingredients.

However after you've done it for 2 months you have a ton of their nice recipe cards and can just go buy ingredients yourself.

i wish supermarkets would just sell a box kit similar to blue apron. 40 bucks for 4 nights of ingredients for 2 people - i dont always need a whole cabbage, a whole ginger stalk, a whole whatever. they could wrap it in wax paper, use a cardboard box, the entire unit could be digestible or compostable.

Blue Apron failed?

They've never made a profit in any year. And the last two years in a row their top line sales have declined. Furthermore, their stock price has gone from $10 to <$1 since they IPO'ed. I'd definitely call that a failure regardless of whether they are still in business or not. Is it possible that they turn it around? Yeah, it's possible. But as of right now, I think the label "failure" is more than appropriate, at least from an investor perspective. Just because they can, for the moment, continue to sell their product/service at a loss to customers is no great accomplishment.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/APRN/financials?p=APRN

I like routines, and I am the type of person that becomes a "regular" at various businesses. But, food is one area of my life where I love to explore. There are so many different foods and cultures in the world which express their history in some way through food, to be so bland and banal as to eat the same thing every day. I do almost the same thing every day, I could set my clock by my lifestyle, but when it is time for a meal I always seek variety.

But I don't judge those who do this, because I understand the relaxation of decision points, the ease of calorie consciousness and weight management, and the ability to balance nutrition that comes with a standard meal.

Once you start investing in healthy eating, you quickly realize that there are 3 types of food: healthy, sugary, and sluggish.

You always get to choose which one you want, but it's exactly that: a choice!

I have to chose to eat things I don't want. Is that what your are saying? cuz I want sugar.

I think you are the one trying to say something but I can't figure out exactly what.

Sluggish?

Yeah, a "nice" and slow dinner.

food is healthful, people who eat healthful food are healthy.

Everything that gives you calories for fuel is healthy in moderation.

When I was in grad school, I lived on oatmeal for breakfast, a cheese sandwich on homemade bread for lunch, and a small stir-fry on rice for supper. I never got sick of it.

Now my spouse is vegetarian, and the kids don't eat beef (long story). If we eat meat, it's just a nice little bit of chicken or pork that the kids and I can put on our portion. And due to a health scare, I have replaced the cheese sandwiches with hummus on bread.

Recently my family went on a trip and I had to stay behind. So, on the first day, I went to store and brought home ... a steak!

When it came time for me to make my supper, I looked at the little steak, then proceeded to chop it into bits and turned it into ... a small stir-fry on rice for supper. The beef was a treat, and I spiced it up more than usual.

During the remaining five days of my family's trip, I lived on oatmeal for breakfast, a hummus sandwich for lunch, and a small stir-fry on rice for supper.

That hilarious, we had a very similar meal plan. I used to have oatmeal for breakfast since I was a teenager. A simple sandwich for lunch and a stir fry for dinner.

I would cooked 5 portions of the stir fry on the weekend and have dinner for M-F. I did vary it up with different types of meat and vegetables, but otherwise it was the same.

Never got sick of it.

My daughter went to college this year. But I still cook the same amount for supper, meaning that I get a nice lunch for the next day!

I have 5 bottles of soylent a day, I absolutely love it and don't see myself stopping. I dislike preparing, eating, and cleaning up so I just avoid it. Every month I get a shipment of soylent and that is all my food related chores done for the month once I bring the boxes up to my room.

I enjoy cooking and food, but Huel (UK equivalent to Soylent) has allowed me to separate that from nutrition.

I often don't have the time and energy to plan and prepare healthy and enjoyable weekday lunches, so now they are all Huel. It's also very convenient if I'm travelling or busy at what would normally be a mealtime (Huel while driving is great).

5?! Pardon the wholly inappropriate comment, your innards must shine like polished steel.

I do go quite quickly

I doubt it has time to touch the sides on the way through.

I really enjoyed the Soylent cafe shakes as a breakfast replacement. Other diet things pulled me away, but those chai ones are amazingly nutritious.

I implore you to get your T checked regularly.

Isoflavones have no effect on male T levels, this has been disproven over and over again: https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(09)00966-2/pdf

People are just exploiting insecure men to sell nutrient powders.

No health insurance :/

Sounds like some of my own work, I hypothesized that the body doesn’t need food itself, merely the chemicals and elements it contains. So, what if I consumed only the raw ingredients the body uses for energy? Soylent was the obvious choice because our bodies do not need food.

I don't think I've read a more absurd thing in my life. I chuckled.

You're still consuming food - Soylent is food.

There is no magic "food" quality that is granted to chemicals, at the end of the day you need your macro and micro nutrients and that's it. As it stands we're also well adapted for finding and consuming nutrition, so we've evolved means of enjoying consuming those chemicals in certain ratios.

Hmm a spiritual concept. Matthew 4:4: But he answered and said, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. and Luke 4:4: And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

Nutrition is hardly a "solved" science, but your body needs more than raw elements to live. You cant just eat a plate of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (some of the most common elements in organic chemistry).

Is this satire?

One of the enjoyable things about surfing is when you find there are other people like you.

Almost every day since the mid-80's, I have what I call a Tarnower lunch: half a can of pineapple chunks, half a can of mandarin oranges, a dollop of cottage cheese and a few walnut pieces, along with a small bran muffin. Tastes fine, not too bad nutritionally, and no congnitive overhead.

Sounds like a ton of sugar and carbs to me with barely any protein...

Nuts & cheese contain protein. And whole pineapple chunks is not "just sugar", I thought it was pretty well established that whole fruit is not comparable to soda. Although I guess in fairness depending on the can you buy, some have a fair amount of added sugar in the form of juices & syrups.

I buy bags of frozen fruit pieces. One advantage is that you get just the fruit with no juice or syrup, and I think frozen fruits and vegetables taste better than their canned counterparts anyway.

canned fruit can have a lot of added sugar though

I couldn't say what the numbers are, although the fruit cans say "is in its own juice" and I think cottage cheese has protien, for what that is worth. But I enjoy it, which is important too.

Sugar from fruit is a world of difference from sugar in processed foods.

... Throw it all in a blender with a can of Albecore tuna, some Vanilla flavored Soy milk and you got yourself decent breakfast or even a pre-workout drink!

Tuna shake, baby!

Tuna shakes were a meme from the old misc.fitness.weights days. I was never sure whether anyone actually drank them regularly, or just said they did because it sounded hardcore.

Is there something surfing specific to that meal choice or otherwise nutritionally useful for the activity? Or just the pleasantness of random taste profile aligning with someone else’s?

And what do you do with the other half of the can of pineapples?

I am guessing gp meant "surfing" as in the internet, not waves.

I meant that surfing the interwebs sometimes turns up things that are pleasant.

And, finding that other people do something that my wife regards as a bit odd.

As to the other half can, I eat iton the next day.

Ha! When I read your comment I imagined a wonderful life that involved surfing (on the beach) every day for the past thirty years and eventually meeting a friendly community of fellow surfers that liked canned pipeapple.

That breakfast wouldn't last you through a multi hour surf session.

I'd bonk on that after half an hour.

I think oatmeal would work better for actual surfing.

Perhaps this is "surfing" the web?

Variety in taste is just a luxury, it's a few seconds of pleasure while eating that your body doesn't care about. People spend way too much time deciding, cooking, eating, and usually choosing unhealthy meals because of this.

As many comments here show, you realize just how unimportant it all is when finding your next meal is a struggle.

Found the robot. No seriously, maybe we should all just be eating bachelor chow. Actually, just hook me up to one of those feeder tubes like in the matrix. Yeah.

You can do whatever you want. We're not all alike, but yea I have better things to do and am grateful I can afford to get get a meal whenever I want.

One of my companies had subsidized lunch (you could also buy dinner for cheap) with 5-6 options available. As most bulk food, options were generally greasy and unhealthy, with one unchanging exception: roast chicken. For over a year I ate roast chicken and salad both for lunch and dinner every workday.

I do love food and cooking, but the sheer convenience, speed and cost saving was impossible to ignore. I've never been leaner and healthier in my life, and I would still indulge myself cooking my favorite meals on the weekends.

10/10 would repeat.

When I announced the birth of my child the company I worked with fired me instantly and living off one income (my spouse was still working) was tough. Money got so short that I started looking for cheap but "healthy" food options. I decided on organic potatoes. For the last 2 years I have been boiling 5 potatoes for lunch (exactly 32 mins on the stove), serving it with white balsamic vinegar, sunflower oil and salt. I feel with all the junk food around full of crappy soy and corn sirup this is the least bad alternative. It is always a challenge to feed myself especially when I train for a Marathon. I do lose weight during this period and very often I go to bed extremely hungry only to wake up at 4am for yet another training run. I stay focused and try not to spend any money on anything for me. Temptations are everywhere though! I only spend money to feed my child.

What I learned over the last 2 years is important: don't ever eat crap out of convenience - there's lots of healthy alternative options out there even if you live in a very expensive neighborhood (like I); never ever through out limp vegetables! You can still throw it in a pot with broth and make "soup/stew"; invest into your future (your kids) and don't be ashamed to admit your days are counted ...

I take this as a life lesson. Once I have a job again, I will appreciate food even more.

wow. what's your job and current household income?

I've eaten the same thing everyday ever since I got old enough to understand lunch as a concept. Food is just not important to me, it just has to fill me up and cover my macro nutrient. I think this is pretty common, at least here in Scandinavia

Do you eat the same lunch every day? Or do you eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner (and eat that every day)?

Reminds me of

"The Norwegian art of the packed lunch, Matpakke - Most Boring Lunch in the world - Ever?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlNmeVK_zLg

BBC also ran an article not too long ago about this... I wouldn't mind it once in a while!

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190103-the-norwegian-art-...

My view on food is relatively simple: Life is way too short for boring food. I could not imagine eating the same thing every day.

That's not to say I eat a completely new-to-me meal every day. When I was single, I would cook and then eat the same meal 3-4 days in a row, but I would change it up every week.

Now, what we (my girlfriend and I) usually do is cook and bake on Sundays, then freeze about half and eat the rest during the week, interspersed with meals from the freezer, from previous weeks. We like to cook big portions, especially soups, curries, stews and such.

Baking-wise, we prefer to bake sourdough bread or slow-raised bread with minimal yeast. We also make homemade ice cream and bake cakes.

I can understand that some people think it takes way too much time and effort that they would rather spend on other things, but we consider it quality time spent together, doing something we both love to do.

> Life is way too short for boring food

I think it's not that life is way too short, but that you enjoy new food. For me, sometimes the food decision tree feels like too much time lost to food while other more interesting tasks could be done, and then I choose a tuna/chicken salad and get over with it.

It's not that I only like new food, I absolutely love comfort food as well. I just love food in general, including good tuna/chicken salad :-)

Just curious as to why you say bread with 'minimal yeast', particularly after listing sourdough?

What I mean is bread with long rising time, ideally 20-24 hours. The improvement in flavour and structure is well worth it.

I rarely use more than ~20g of sourdough or 4-5g of yeast for a full-sized loaf with ~1kg flour. Sometimes a tiny (~0.1g) bit of yeast to help out the sourdough if the current batch is slightly lazy.

Like the person mentioned in the story with food allergies, I eat the same meal everyday for the same reason. I found a restaurant that will take care of cross contamination, and foods that don't make me feel sick. I'm going to milk this opportunity for as long as I can. I eat 3 beef patties, 2 chicken patties, and fries. For dessert I have some greasy corn tortilla chips. On the weekends I cook steak, brazilian cheese bread (Brazi Bites), and some broccoli.

The alternative is going from restaurant to restaurant, hoping they know about food allergies and take prep seriously, scrutinizing ingredients, then still ending up sick a few times a month. I'll happily take monotony for gains in health.

Are you sure you have gains in health, considering you’re eating burgers, tortillas and fries only, every day?

Yea, besides the glib answer of me no longer wanting to die because of chronic sinus pain, I do think I'm better off.

I was very much living on sugar before. So I'm no longer making my pancreas work overtime. The repeated inflammation of sinuses was probably going to give me cancer [1], so I'm better off there too. Cutting out gluten (celiac) means my small intestine isn't getting destroyed and I'm probably absorbing way more nutrients than I did before.

My big risks right now are colon cancer when I'm older. I've been eating more vegetables on the weekends to make up for it. As I age I'll also phase out red meat. I don't see any immediate negatives now.

No question I have health gains. Every negative, body destroying thing I was eating is out. I feel great. Now it's just mitigating long term risk.

1. https://www.cancernetwork.com/colorectal-cancer/chronic-infl...

I'm one of those people who can eat the same PB&J sandwhich every day for lunch and be fine with it. My wife on the other hand really goes crazy if she doesn't get enough variety.

I can't think of an evolutionary advantage of desiring variety, it seems (although I don't know if there is any studies to the effect that it is true) typical that various fauna have a 'typical' diet that they forage for and rarely vary. Even omnivores who are able to forage on a non-seasonally variable food stock.

From an economics point of view, as a single eater, having a limited variability, allows bulk purchases to take advantage of the economics of scale and reduces landfill waste (fewer containers overall).

An evolutionary advantage: having multiple, varied food sources is a protection against one of them going extinct. If the apple snails die out, so do the apple snail kites.

Humans are indeed pretty unique in that there are so many things we can eat. It has likely helped us as a species through various natural disasters.

That's a solid point. No doubt our ability to eat pretty much anything is a selectable for as a positive survival trait.

>I can't think of an evolutionary advantage of desiring variety

For one, you can survive better if your "non varied" sources of food die off.

Second, you get more nutrients etc (for an organism that has already needs for different nutrients like us, eating the same thing every day can even be lethal, e.g. scurvy, etc).

There are no single foods that humans can live on, due to nutritional requirements. At least some desire for variety is necessary for basic survival.

I guess this means the 'meat maximalist' carnivory diet will eventually 'die off'

No, it won't. Meat has everything the body needs.

Owsley Stanley was a soundman for the Grateful Dead. He also had one other claim to fame… he ate nothing but meat for 47 years. Let me repeat that, he ate nothing but meat for FORTY-SEVEN YEARS. He wrote all about his diet on a low-carb forum back in 2006. He died in a car accident not too long after but his words of wisdom still live on. You can read how he came to the conclusion that the natural human diet is a totally carnivorous one. It is fascinating reading and I have read it (over 300 pages) multiple times.

Read it here: https://eatmeatdrinkwater.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/the-be...

It's an interesting read. I read all of it except the repetitive forum bit. I don't have anything negative to say about his conclusions, but I'd have to read more supporting evidence before accepting it as gospel.

Even if he's right, it'd be nearly impossible for most people to follow the diet, and about 90% of the world population would have to die off for everyone to follow it sustainably (not that I have any problem with that).

I do this. Every day for lunch I have two soft-boiled eggs in soy sauce and some higher-grade instant ramen. It's a great way to get a mix of salts, fats, carbs, and proteins in you at low cost (I spend about $2/day on lunch all in) and high speed (I can make and eat my lunch in 20min). It's enjoyable and lets me walk my dog or play a game for a few minutes instead of waiting impatiently at a restaurant.

Two other factors may contribute: I do tend to enjoy rewatching TV shows and movies (so it may be a broader personality trait) and I dislike having people serve me in restaurants, which I view as being beneath their dignity (so restaurants aren't as fun for me as they are for most).

I eat the same thing for lunch everyday because it’s one less thing I have to worry about.

I used to be religious about what I ate and would weigh everything, calculate ratios, make adjustments, and making the same thing (grilled chicken, brown rice, black beans, steamed veg) was just easier. I did this for 4 years straight until I changed jobs and started working near a chipotle.

For the next 5 years I’d get the same thing from chipotle for lunch (burrito- white rice, black beans, double chicken, side of salsa) because it was kind of healthy, cheap, the staff got to know me, and I learned what times to avoid. One more thing I put on Auto pilot.

I did the same thing for a year before I got married. I ate my lunch and dinner at a Panera bread next to work place - 5 days a week. I ate half a cup of tomato soup, half a vegetarian sandwich and an apple. I lost nearly 20 pounds over a 1 year period. Infact the team at Panera knew me personally so many times, by the time i paid for my meal it was ready for me to eat. I had a fixed workout/running and meal routine.

My wife hates the monotony but i love the daily structure. I have put on 35 pounds.

Growing up in the north of the UK I had the same 2 lunches every day at primary school (4-11) without even batting an eyelid, cheddar cheese, sliced between white bread, packet of crisps. Or the same sandwich with a slice of processed ham if it was a good week.

It was only once i got to highschool (11-16) and students started taking notice of how bland, unbalanced and repetitive this was. In my world it was totally normal.

I could probably be included in the list of people who eat the same thing every day (at least for breakfast and lunch), and from what I've seen, it seems many of my coworkers are the same.

As for why? Well personally, it's probably a mix of the following:

1. It's easy to not have to worry about what you're going to eat and what it'll taste like.

2. Choices of places to eat are limited in many areas. This isn't so much the case now, but it certainly was for some roles in the past, where the office was pretty much nowhere near a major shopping area/main street.

In that case, it was 'eat the one thing you find palatable in the canteen or get a train/bus/drive/cycle to a place with shops'.

3. My personal tastes are very plain and somewhat picky, to the point of disliking pretty much anything with extra sauce, relish, mayonnaise, spices, etc.

Either way, all of these things are likely reasons for many others too. Many people on the autistic spectrum for instance are rather picky in terms of favoured foods, and will generally stick to the same meals as much as possible. Many people are based in locations where choice is limited/a hassle in general.

And there are other reasons too:

1. Some people like having a routine (as mentioned in other comments) 2. Some like to know exactly how healthy their diet is, which is easier with a limited choice (also mentioned in other comments) 3. Quite a few people probably prefer eating at their desk while browsing Hacker News/Reddit/YouTube/the internet in general, which precludes going far for shopping. 4. If you're a workaholic, it's easier to stick with one type of meal rather than having to prepare different ones/go shopping.

There are many reasons really.

Being from the rural part of an emerging country, I have heard countless stories about how "when I was your age, all we could afford to eat was this and that". Here, varied meals have become a way to express your (good) taste, how open-minded you are, and how much foreign food you can afford. I could hardly settle for any of the diets described above.

Every evening for 4 years :

Pasta + Ketchup + Wasabi.

I just love it, and feel no need to change that!

Knew a couple, had a stack of frozen dinners delivered every week, put them in a standup freezer. Whoever got home first had to take the top two dinners, put them in the oven for dinner. No picking thru the stack; no arguing over who got what. Does that count as 'the same dinner every day'?

This made me think of the Chinese practice of zuoyuezi (坐月子) [0] which translates to "sitting the month" and refers to what we know as postpartum confinement in the West, and which includes a fairly strict diet for postpartum mothers.

Many women who practice this in the US will pay someone to prepare these meals for them a week at a time (they will come to your home and basically do meal prep for the week with the last few days worth going in to the freezer). There is a company in SoCal [1] that will prepare the meals and ship them to you frozen, I believe, as well.

I don't know if they're actually healthy or not but you'd hope they would be better than processed foods.

And I guess my point is that money can buy you just about anything. If you want healthy, frozen, ready-to-eat meals, they can be had for a price.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_confinement#China

[1]: https://www.postpartummeal.com/zuo-yue-zi/

That would be useful even if you're not keeping a particular diet, but just want to have food and not want to have to think about it when you've got a new baby.

We stocked the freezer by cooking a lot before our baby was born... and then in a sleep-deprived haze I left the freezer open.

Frozen food sounds like poverty dinner.

You can go in the opposite direction and get frozen meals that cost ~$5 a piece. I eat a lot of pre-prepared tofu, dumplings (refrigerated, not frozen), fried tofu, meatless meatballs, etc... it definitely bucks the stereotype of salt-heavy "what's in this" frozen food.

Of course, it's still better (and cheaper) to make it yourself. But in a pinch it's nothing to shake a stick at.

Neither one wanted to cook; they didn't like going out all the time.

and your blood pressure would be through the roof in no time

naysayer. What if they were boutique frozen Trader Joe's dinners? And don't say 'salt' because that's not actually a thing.

I cycle through about 5 different meals, with almost no meat consumption, and whole grains and slow carbs like whole wheat bread and quinoa. Buying the same things every time makes shopping easy. For most of the last decade, I've also been on an OMAD/intermittent fasting routine. It's helped me become extremely well fat adapted, kept my weight under control, and kept my teeth in very good condition.

Fair warning, it did reduce my BMR noticeably. On days when I'm not active, 1400 kcal is maintenance for me. This, and extreme fat adaption, has advantages for me as a long distance hiker since I can carry less food. But if you like to eat, long term OMAD might be a bad idea.

My breakfasts and dinner tend to be formulaic. Oatmeal and cottage cheese or yogurt for breakfast with the very occasional pause if I choose to grab breakfast with someone (though, I may just order the same thing at the restaurant), whip up some weekend pancakes, or eat the office breakfast. For dinner I keep it light and it’s usually salad or just some yogurt.

Mostly this is due to the reasons espoused in the article. They’re quick, healthy, and I am handling some of my specific health issues without thought. I suppose most important is that I like it.

Lunch is a party though. I’ll put way more effort into making that an adventure meal to balance things out.

I've been having the same breakfast (muesli, natural yoghurt and fruit with a gallon or so of black coffee) for over 30 years.

My lunches tend to be fairly similar - though they do vary.

Dinner varies a lot depending on season and what I fancy cooking and eating - I do like a lot of variety in evening meals, maybe as I am awake by then!

>a gallon or so of black coffee

Is this hyperbole or do you actually drink a gallon of coffee every day?

I love monotony in the right places. I'm particular about food, but I never bothered to research whether eating the same thing is OK. Glad I can just plan a healthy meal, and eat it over and over again.

It's only when I'm with others when I end up doing something different. And that different meal option almost always ends up being something I don't really want to put into my body.

Monotony is a great way to save money too. If you're cooking the same meals there is a lot of efficiencies you discover every day. The only difficulty comes when/if you want to eat seasonally.

Sometimes the desire for variety is just that. A desire.

These days I’m trying [hard. Very hard] to maintain a low calorie diet for the next few months to a year.

For the past while I’ve either skipped lunch or it’s a tin of tuna and a slice of bread and a black tea.

Every morning after my workout I make breakfast for my girlfriend and I and it’s always six (give or take) scrambled eggs with fried scallions, red pepper, and spinach. Along with a buttered or dry piece of toast and two cups of coffee—black pen with homogenized dairy or almond milk. I probably look forward to that meal more than any other all day. I’d double it up if I could!

There is a wise phrase, "more with less", that people may be familiar with. I think this article fits into that paradigm nicely. Imagine the difference in global outcome if person A ate out each day of the week for lunch, while another followed the pattern of eating the same thing for lunch and took the money saved, putting it towards something like clean water in developing nations. Even a single human being doing this would make a big difference.

It simply doesn't matter to me very much what I eat. I find dwelling on the specifics of food to be incredibly tedious (even if cooking itself is occasionally fun).

Some things I like more or less than others, but taste and variety is a distant second to tasty enough and fast.

When choosing where to get lunch, my primary criteria are usually (1) is the expected wait negligible and (2) is there at least one thing on the menu I know for certain I'll like.

I've eaten the same meal for lunch almost everyday for the last two months: https://www.reddit.com/r/GifRecipes/comments/8trml3/one_pan_...

I did it for health and weight loss reasons but it's also very tasty, easy to prepare and cheap! Highly recommend!

I get this. I am a food enthusiast (I maintain my own cooking web app Cookingspace.com) but there are two meals that I eat very often, find the food soothing, and never get tired of them: Ramen soup with a ton of vegetables and some extra seaweed, and whole wheat pita filled with beans, humus, and chopped Romain lettuce. For some reason those two meals are ‘comfort foods’ for me that I keep eating many times a week.

For the last month or so, my lunch/dinners have mostly been quinoa+bone broth+eggs and either fruit or a salad. Fairly bland, sure. I've never felt better. And when I do go out and "splurge", it really feels like a treat. I find that I'm incredibly sensitive to sugar/salt/caffeine now (I cut out coffee for green tea months ago).

I wonder if HN readers just have a higher tendency to not care about fancy food. I’m that kind of person. I also don’t care about varying my clothing unless absolutely necessary for the occasion. I’d rather save my money for other things that I care about, such as decent portable and home audio, vintage fountain pens, and the occasional computer gear.

If lunchtime at my tech workplace is any indication the opposite is true.

Lots of variety. Few regularly bring a lunch and those that do don't seem to bring the same thing regularly.

I don't care about fancy food, all of that flashy style over substance stuff you get at overpriced restaurants.

But I love good food that is made with care and good quality ingredients. Like for instance northern French countryside cuisine, or hearty north Italian dishes, or the best Indian curries. Nothing fancy, nothing flashy, but so goddamn tasty.

I bet a lot of people here are good/excellent cooks. I wouldn't necessarily call my food "fancy," but I would call it good and high quality. Lunch is the worst meal for a lot of those types because most of us are not at home to prepare something good.

I actually skip lunch most days.

I care, but I choose when to care... and when I do it's pretty high end. Some people go out to eat every week, I go maybe every other month... but when I do I make sure it's worth it.

I've enjoyed reading about other people's quirky eating habits!

As for myself I have eaten the same thing for lunch for the past 2.5 years!

Chick and rice. Cooked in a crockpot in a 2-3 day batch. Before I used to use all kinds of sauces and spices and vegetables in it. These days I just use half a bottle of barbecue sauce. I do mix up the sauce every week though.

I'd think that the body might prefer having a largely stable, predictable diet that is overall nutricious, so that body optimizes itsself for it, while being supplemented to a smaller degree with a variety of smaller foods that can help cover any nutrition gaps.

I tend to eat the same meals on the regular (although I'm not strictly dedicated to doing so or anything), mostly because it eliminates the need to spend any time on meaningless decision-making.

When I was in college, I didn't eat the same meal every day. I ate the same ingredients every day. I did not know how to cook.

For dinner, I'd just each an entire package of sausage. That's all.

For me: 1989-1998 -- exact same school lunch

1998 - 2009 -- exact same school lunch but different from 1989 - 1998.

1998 - 2016 -- exact same breakfast 7 days a week

2019 - exact same breakfast for last 2-3 months

This is what Jared Fogle did at Subway to lose weight: 6-inch turkey sub and potato chips for lunch and a foot-long veggie sub for dinner.

Now he's eating prison food.

Doesn’t pretty much everyone who eats breakfast eat the same breakfast every day? Seems odd to make a thing of people extending that to lunch as well

On the weekend I cook several large meals which I then eat as lunch throughout the work week. Usually beans and rice, and vegetable stirfry.

Obligatory link to a BBC article about the Danish matpakke: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190103-the-norwegian-art-...

I personally end up eating the same thing everyday quite a bit. Lunch is there to make me feel good and give me fuel to continue my day, so I feel like I can't really risk trying something out of the ordinary, at least on a workday. There's too high of a risk that I'll be hungry or cranky in the middle of the afternoon when I have things to do!

You illustrate in interesting psychological effect. Given that the title of the article is "The Norwegian art of the packed lunch", the subtitle is "Could we all learn something from Norway's culture of ‘matpakke’?", and the first sentence is "Every day, across Norway, something strange happens", and even the visible link includes the word 'norwegian', how did you accidentally write Danish instead of Norwegian? Or is it not an error?

Whoops, that's embarrassing. I was thinking it was Denmark and then copied and pasted the article and typed out my response while I was doing something else. People good at multitasking: not me.

Man as an indian i can't relate at all, i literally have something new for every meal forget every day

1800 word exercise in navel gazing, and it attract 200+ comments and growing.

If you read this wall of text and then spent a good chunk of Friday writing one or more lengthy comments about it you should know something; you're living in paradise. Actual paradise. You have nothing to complain about because you've been entirely liberated from any significant burdens or risks. You've won.

Congratulations.

I wonder what effects the lack of variety might have on someone's gut bacteria.

I'm more surprised that people find this surprising than anything else.

I've found a way to take this formula and make it into a very effective weight-loss diet. I've been at it for almost a year and have lost 20 pounds so far, and it doesn't seem like I'm going to have any trouble keeping it off. Granted, I'm not anywhere near the traditional 5-year mark used in studies to evaluate whether someone has relapsed. But it does feel like something that I can sustain, even for the rest of my life if that's needed to keep the weight off.

There are some trends coming together in recent research that suggest that the most sustainable way to lose weight not to follow any specific regime, but to find a set of food restrictions that you can live with but which still lower your overall "food reward" to a level that you can sustain without giving up. (See this book review at Slate Star Codex [1] for more on these ideas.) It's like a much more fine-tuned and personalized version of the fad diets that don't have calorie-counting but add some restriction so that you don't want to eat as much, like the Atkins Diet or the grapefruit diet.

It turns out what works for me is to limit myself to 3-4 specific meal categories a day, only changing something up every few months. Currently it's Grape Nuts Flakes and milk in the morning, a homemade turkey and roast beef sandwich (or even 2) for lunch, and homemade burritos or Barilla Plus pasta for dinner. No beverages except water. No sides, except there are a couple of low-reward foods that I'm allowed to eat all day (currently Spring Mix and steam-in-bag veggies).

Crucially, these are actually some of my favorite foods–and some are pretty high-calorie–but if they are the only things that I am allowed to eat every day, my food reward starts to drift down and I want fewer calories.

I don't put any limits on anything, so I'm never physically hungry and my willpower isn't being drained every day by trying to limit myself. I let myself eat pretty much whatever when I go out socially, but otherwise absolutely no cheating.

We'll see how it works out in the long run, but overall I'm just as happy as before. Any boredom from the diet itself is mostly cancelled out by the benefits mentioned in the article (saving money, not needing to think about making your meals, etc.) Not to mention the whole "losing weight" part!

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry...

'Zerocarb' here. I don't insist on eating the exact same thing, but what I eat is quite limited - meat, animal fat, salt and water.

I started this because of health issues, but I grew to like the simplicity of it as well. I can eat one large meal and not feel hungry or exhausted the whole day, and I can easily find adequate food without being fussy in most environments. For example, McDonalds burger patties are 100% beef.

I hope you get some fiber with that...

ZC is an autoimmune diet, the whole point is to remove immunogenic plant (and animal) foods from your diet.

Body adapts quickly to it. I have regular bowel movements, it comes out with no effort, and it actually barely has any smell on top of that.

> I can eat one large meal

How much meat do you roughly eat in one sitting? Are you eating enough to maintain (or increase) your body weight?

About a kilo. But varies depending on how much tallow or butter I add.

Are you able to successfully maintain your body weight in ZC OMAD?

That is insanely bad diet. Hilarious. How are your numbers? Btw, meat causes cancer[0].

0. https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/

Please don't cross into incivility or personal attack in HN comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Lol, I checked your posting history and you're a vegan glorifying tofu as protein source.

It is pretty obvious that your smear attempts on keto and zerocarb are ideologically motivated.

> That is insanely bad diet.

That's your ill-informed opinion.

> Btw, meat causes cancer

It does not: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/food/meats/#i12

Post body

I survive on One Meal a Day Diet

Which consists of

a) Oatmeal b)Green Tea c) Coffee

I've been going strong

On weekends I drink protein shake.

I've gained much muscle and focus back through this diet.

This will definitely cause nutrient deficiency if you try to follow it for more than a few months... but if you added in some fruits and vegetables and you'd be fine.

Yar, that be a recipe for scurvy.

What do you use for micro and macronutrients? Oatmeal will fill you and keep you going but there's not much in it.

How much oatmeal do you eat? Do you intend to lose weight or maintain it? OMAD is generally easier for fat people.

According to yog and aayurved, the recommendation is to limit(not avoid) fibre-based, protein-based and fat-based food. Too much fibre and protein is bad for the digestion system and too much fat is bad for the body. Two tablespoon of Ghee(i.e. pure butter) everyday is recommended and is enough for the body. Also, the recommendation is to wake up at 4:00 am, mediate and/or exercise, drink a glass of warm(not cold) water before lunch, have lunch before 7:00 am, stomach should be max 2/3 filled after lunch, eat fruits and dry fruits the rest of the day whenever you feel hungry, drink warm water whenever you feel thirsty, have lite dinner before 5:00 pm, and sleep at 8:00 pm before doing some meditation.

That is the recommendation for a calm, refreshing and healthy life.

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