Does eating same foods every day help?

I haven't logged in quite some time, but I eat nearly the same breakfast everyday - 3 egg sandwich. That's just because I like it and it's easy.

I often repeat many meals based on food prep, convenience, or yumminess. Lol. I don't eat the same meals as my kids, so I may have four days worth of tikki masala or grilled asparagus. Tuna with sugar free relish and 1 T mayo is super easy and macro friendly, so that's a real go to for me. Same thing with cottage cheese or Greek yogurt and protein powder. I'm admittedly addicted to coffee, so that's a yummy factor. Logging the same thing over and over again gives me a good idea of *what* to eat though, as well. For example, if I'm way under on fats (which is pretty normal for me), I know I can have a couple pieces of bacon and a whole egg or two. If I'm under on carbs, I may eat some fruit. It helps with being able to hit my numbers without too much thought.

I tend to eat the same breakfast because I like it a lot, it's cheap, it's filling- peanut butter toast. Lunch wise I tend to get an entire week's worth of lunches ready to go on Sunday so I can just grab it and head out so each week's lunch is pretty much the same.

I tend to eat the same breakfast on weekdays...usually a one egg and four egg white omelet with some kind of veg and salsa along with either oats or pinto beans depending on my mood. I do it primarily because it's a solid, high protein breakfast that is easy...I do everything in the microwave. I have never been a big cereal guy and everything else I like to make for breakfast is too tedious for weekdays. I try to get 30 grams of protein at each meal and at least one snack...that puts me at a minimum of about 120 grams per day.

Lunches tend to be similar, but not necessarily the same...again, this is mostly because it's easy and I'm brown bagging it to work 99% of the time. Usually my wife and I will make double whatever protein we're having at dinner so that we have leftovers for lunch...and on Sundays we prep either a bunch of sweet potatoes, potatoes, quinoa, or brown rice to take as a side and then some kind of veg...for me it's usually broccoli because it's easy to steam at work. About once per week I have a sandwich for lunch and I go to Santa Fe for work a couple of times per month usually and will go enjoy a nice lunch out when I do that.

Dinner is the meal that I basically have time to be creative and do something different with.

I've been in maintenance for over three years and I don't log...so there is the added convenience of knowing basically what these thing are going to be calorie and macro wise.

@cwolfman13 - If you haven't been already, head to Casa Sena for a nice lunch on the patio. It's (roughly) northeast of the Plaza. Love that place.

FitFunLosAngeles wrote: »

I like to look at the diaries of people who have maintained their weight, and I notice many of them tend to eat the same thing every day - particularly weekday breakfasts and lunches.
I wonder - does the time-consuming aspect of logging food in MyFitnesspal encourage people to eat the same things, or do people tend to do it because it is just easier?

I like it for convenience/structure. I have two breakfasts I tend to use and then 3-4 lunch templates I follow. It makes it easy to get things ready in the morning when I can do them without thinking about it too much. It also makes grocery shopping easier.

I eat a lot of the same stuff during the week because I like it and I'm only cooking for me. On the weekends I try to make food that the rest of my family will like.

A few months ago I stopped tracking my food altogether since I no longer felt that I needed to after 5 years of maintaining with nothing gained back. That said, I noticed when I was tracking my foods I did tend to eat the same exact things every day unlike now, where everyday is something different than the day before. I even like to eat new foods these days that I never would before. For me, I think I tented to eat the same thing simply because I didn't have to bother figuring out how many calories calories to eat since it was easier to copy & paste the meal I ate the day before.... I'm actually enjoying eating again now that I no longer have to be consumed with the numbers.

Usually I will eat the same thing (maybe with a few variations) for several days in a row because it's easier to cook/prepare one batch of food. Most of the time I'm cooking for myself as my husband is away for work for four weeks out of five, so I usually prepare 3-5 days of lunches and one or two different things for dinner and eat them till they are all gone or I'm too bored. Breakfasts are usually one of about three options during the week with more variety on weekends.
I do this to make my life easier and meal prep quicker. But, yes, being able to use the copy tool to add yesterdays lunch into today's diary is another reason.

I've spent most of my adult life eating roughly the same things every weekday for months at a time. It makes shopping and cooking easier, and tends to be cheap because I can buy in bulk. It also allows me to cook TONS of food all at once and freeze it in individual containers, saving lots of time overall.

It makes it very easy to control calories with minimal thought whether I'm cutting, bulking, or maintaining.

I eat the same basic thing but with small variations depending on what's seasonal. So breakfast is oatmeal with a tablespoon of ground flaxseed and a few nuts and a pile of fruit - the fruit varies depending on what's available. Lunch is usually whatever soup I've made in a batch at the weekend, with a handful of seeds, some bread and cooked veggies/rice and fruit. Dinner is more varied and depends on what leftovers are in the fridge and how much time I have, but something like pasta with veggies, beans/lentils, tofu etc. is pretty standard.

It means I don't really have to think and I know I'm getting enough iron, calcium etc. and staying more-or-less within calories. Weekends are much less structured, but if I eat too much at the weekend, I might skip a meal to make up.

I eat pretty much the same breakfast and lunch and then rotate through a couple dinners both my wife and I like. Mostly for convenience. It is just easy to once a week grill up enough chicken breasts for lunches and a few dinners rather than every morning try and figure out what I want to make for lunch.

A little bit because I am a creature of habit, both good and bad.

I eat mostly the same stuff. That's because at some point I sat there looking up food stats, plugging things into my spreadsheet, and experimenting with combos. Which is a PITA, but once done it makes good eating _very_ easy and mindless.

Yes, it helps. I may eat the same things for my work breakfast and/or lunch for weeks or months on end. I don't have to worry about missing anything in my calorie counts because I know I didn't eat anything outside the box at work. I save variety for dinner (usually some 15 meal rotation where I know the cals), but even then, we may eat the same thing 2-3 times in a row because we both work full-time and don't feel like making meals from scratch every single night.