Eating the Same Food Every Day Can Have a Shocking Effect on Weight Loss

Consistency is key to building healthy habits, and our daily food choices can be just that.

Researchers at Drexel University in the US have now found evidence that indulging in the same meals and snacks day after day can lead to more successful weight loss over the course of several months.

While diversity in the diet is undoubtedly important for human health, these new results show that eating the same meal over and over again can come with perks for those who want to lose weight.

As long as the food and snacks are good, they can help with weight loss more than a flexible and varied diet.

“Maintaining a healthy diet in today’s food environment requires constant effort and self-control,” says lead author and health psychologist Charlotte Hagerman from Drexel University.

“Creating a routine around eating can reduce that burden and make healthy choices more automatic.”

For the study, Hagerman and colleagues analyzed self-reported food logs of 112 overweight or obese adults who were enrolled in a structured behavioral weight loss program.

In the first 12 weeks of the program, participants who eat the same meals and snacks, as well as people with calorie consistency day-to-day, tend to lose more body weight than people who choose different foods, or whose caloric intake fluctuates more widely.

Specifically, people who stuck to a more regular weight loss diet lost 5.9 percent of their body weight on average, while people with a more varied diet lost 4.3 percent.

It’s a small difference, but one that can be significant, especially in the long run if this weight loss is maintained.

The authors of the study calculated that for every one hundred calorie difference in the day-to-day diet of our participants, weight loss decreased by 0.6 percent over the 12-week period of our study.

The research is small and not enough to back up the evidence that a varied diet has health benefits for most people. And, of course, it’s important to talk to your doctor before making any big changes to your diet.

However, it is one of the first studies to use real-time food tracking data to explore how regular eating helps with weight loss over several months.

Findings show that the constant variety of food we are surrounded by, day in and out, may be hampering some weight loss regimens.

“If we live in a healthier food environment, we can encourage people to have as varied a diet as possible,” explained Hagerman.

“However, our modern food environment is too problematic. Instead, people can do the best with a more repetitive diet that helps them consistently make healthier choices, even if they can sacrifice some types of nutrition.”

Current research does not consider the nutritional quality of the diet eaten. This means that they may have lost weight by eating an unhealthy diet.

However, the participants are enrolled in a behavioral weight loss treatment program, in which they work with a trainer to determine their daily calorie intake and weekly weight loss goals.

There are two ways participants can approach their goal: They can either keep the daily calorie intake consistent, or they can prioritize the weekly average, ‘saving’ some calories for special occasions.

People who log their food choices on most days, which is highly predictive of weight loss, still lose more weight if they have a more regular diet.

Related: 30-Year Study May Find Best Diet for Healthy Aging

The researchers couldn’t say for sure whether the weight loss was actually due to a more regular diet, but the association had them wanting to know more.

“Even a varied healthy diet can increase decision-making points, making it more complicated to count calories, compared to meals with pre-calculated calories,” hypothesized the authors of the study.

Sounds like a randomized clinical trial in the making.

This study was published in Health Psychology.