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Comment by apo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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