Eating the same thing every day

This morning I was looking through my Facebook feed and I noticed a status update from fellow blogger Diane Lee. Diane had shared a post from mindbodygreen titled Why I eat the same thing every single day. It got me thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of eating the same thing every day.

I remember at primary school it seemed like for a year I’d have vegemite sandwiches every day and then another year I’d have peanut paste sandwiches every day. Sometimes there may be a little jam with the peanut paste. I was fortunate, I was allowed tuckshop once a fortnight and for little lunch I’d have a jam doughnut (now known as a long john) and for big lunch I’d have a meat pie and a bottle of pepsi. Those were the days when a hot pie cost $0.20 and the bottle of pepsi cost $0.15 and then I’d get $0.05 back if I returned the empty bottle.

Some of my eating now follows similar repetitive patterns, for example, last year I ate salmon every Monday night for the whole year.

Tonight I made a baked salmon dish which was essentially the same as what I cooked for dinner last Monday and Tuesday.

Baked salmon and creamy cabbage with nuts for crunch
Baked salmon and creamy cabbage with nuts for crunch

In winter on most Sundays I’ll slowly roast a joint of some meat and keep some for lunches at work. The photographs are pretty monotonous. A plastic container with leaves, meat and cheese. You can see the pattern at my Facebook page.

Clearly the advantage of eating the same thing is the ease of grocery shopping, cooking and eating. The disadvantages include it being boring and it would make food photography and posting to social media pointless.

Hopefully, even though my food instagram feed shows lots of similar foods, it’s varied enough not to be too boring.

I think I’ve got a good balance going of some repetition to make life easy and enough variation to make life interesting.

What do you think? Would you eat the same thing every day?

12 Responses

  1. A few years back I joined Cohens Lifestyle Clinic to loose weight. To make it easy I pretty much ate the same thing every day breakfast, lunch and dinner. When you are on a strict diet any food tastes good. I still have the 1 egg, mushroom and tomato omelet for breakfast every day. I am bored with it but I think if I try to start the day with a low fat no carb meal I might continue that theme throughout. Rarely works. LOL my only concern about eating the same food every day is that your body must adjust to that and if you are trying to loose weight it may cause you to plateau. Sometimes mixing it up can keep the metabolism in its toes. Mind you I’m no expert. That’s just how I think.

    1. Hi Georgina, I think there is some truth in the notion that eating the same thing day in day out can create a plateau in weight loss. My gut feeling is the people who maintain that approach are already at their ideal weight (or close to it) and I’m guessing their passion for food may not be as great as mine. The description of having something nutrient dense sounds so boring and it’s like cooking and eating are relegated to chores that need to be completed rather than enjoyed. If I could reset my mind before every meal so that the same thing was exciting I’d probably be a lot thinner than what I am 😀

  2. I think I would get bored if I ate the same thing everyday/ a lot but I do have some comfort foods that I crave every now and then regardless what I have been eating, like congee or rice with a sunny side up egg and soy sauce

    1. Mmm…congee in winter. I love a Sunday night’s bowl of rice with a fried egg and some lup cheong and soy sauce.

  3. 1 – I don’t think you can ever go wrong with a Sunday roast! And then you get to eat it again throughout the week..delicious
    2 – Amazing that you had salmon every week for a year! That’s super healthy! And don’t they recommend that you eat fish a few times a week anyway? You must be brimming with good levels of omega 3 🙂
    3 – Also when you’re cooking for one, you need to be creative and economical to use up all your ingredients otherwise you would have an endless shopping list and be throwing out so much food!
    From what I see of your food (at least lately with your low carb plan;) you look like you’ve got a pretty good diverse set of meals

    1. Thanks Jen. Low carb can get a little boring so I’m trying to mix things up. I’m now at a stage where I can introduce some nuts which helps. I reckon I could eat salmon 21 times a week 😀

  4. I often the eat the same thing several days running and then might repeat that the following week. I couldn’t eat the same thing everyday for long though. I have friends who have the same dish every week on specific days, eg Monday chops, Tuesday sausages etc. It would make the shopping easy but a bit monotonous. GG

    1. I agree GG. I go for a run of the same thing for the beginning of the week and then it peters out as I want to buy something for lunch or I yearn for takeaway 🙂

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