Is Variety Always the Spice of Life?
“Variety's the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavour.”
― William Cowper
I’d like to think the above quote embodies most of my life. Rarely does a day provide me the exact same activities in the same order. I don’t have a designated day or time to clean my house or do my laundry. I am constantly changing up my yard full of plants, moving some here and there, adding others. If you knew me in high school you would know that I never liked wearing the same outfit more than once. Heck, before moving to Portland, my husband and I uprooted our family and moved to the United Kingdom for five years. And if you ask me to watch a movie that I have seen before, I will roll my eyes as I don’t like watching things more than once. Most of my life is full of variety, experiencing new things at every turn. I love it. It is exhilarating.
Except for when it comes to my nutrition. In life I devour most new and flavorful experiences, and the tendency to do so with food is no different. If I could add an addendum to the famous quote, I would still keep the ‘u’ in ‘flavour’ (as I am an Anglophile), but I would add this in my best British accent:
“Variety’s the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavour. But if there’s too much flavour, you will be tempted to overindulge.”
— Julie
I’m sure the English poet never envisioned that a woman of the 21st century would distort his clever quote to apply to one’s daily eating. But I have experienced firsthand the struggle to limit one’s portions when dietary diversity is present at every meal, every day. If each breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack changes constantly, it is incredibly hard to meet your health goals if they include losing fat. “Eating a more diverse diet might be associated with eating a greater variety of both healthy and unhealthy foods,” said Marcia C. de Oliveira Otto, PhD, lead author of a 2018 scientific study published in the journal Circulation. From personal experience, yes and yes.
I’m not advocating to live a life so regimented that every single meal is the same as the day before. But I am suggesting that if you struggle to control your daily food intake for whatever reason, it might be helpful to consider taking away a small amount of daily variety and replacing it with the same meal that you would eat for most days of the week. While it may not sound exhilarating, it will create boundaries for success that help to limit overeating.
Practically speaking, I have chosen to eat the same lunch day after day and the same snack each evening before bed. My dinners on the other hand, vary greatly each night, having lots of nutritional variety. I bet you can easily guess which meal I struggle to resist the urge to reach for seconds (full disclosure - maybe thirds)? You guessed it, the dinners.
And while some may call me boring for eating the same lunch religiously, my meal itself is in no way boring as it consists of healthy and nutritionally dense foods that are not only satisfying, but that I love. And because of the familiarity of my routine, I have come to prepare it on auto pilot without being tempted to increase my portions.
Not only does this way of eating “reduce ‘cognitive overhead’ - a way of not expending mental energy” as Joe Pinsker writes in the Atlantic’s “The People Who Eat the Same Meal Every Day,” but “eating the same thing over and over can also simplify the decisions (we) make about what (we) put into (our) bodies.”
And when these decisions are simplified, we come to know what to expect and how to feel upon eating. If every time you went on a run around the block, you came back drenched in sweat, you would quickly learn to expect the sweat that is produced from the run. Similarly, when I eat the same meal for lunch everyday, I have also come to expect the familiar feelings that my meal provides me upon completion. While I wouldn’t say that I am left feeling really full (which is an unreliable feeling for me because of years of restriction), I can certainly say this way of eating leaves me feeling satiated. Not stuffed, but in no way hungry. In contrast, when my daily lunch used to vary wildly, at the end of some meals I wouldn’t feel satisfied. Chasing that sensation I would rarely be able to figure out if it was a mental or physical? And the more I pondered it, the more I was tempted to grab a couple more handfuls of something which usually led to overeating.
Now when I finish my lunch or snack, I know what feeling to expect afterwards. And if there is a random day where I feel hungrier, I am more likely to ignore the feeling, usually associating it with my emotions because I am able to look back at the countless days where my meal was satisfying.
This simple habit of regimenting two out of three meals daily versus having each meal full of incredible dietary diversity has left me stating to myself, “I am full,” instead of asking, “Am I full?” And the self talk of stating rather than asking has made all of the difference in my health.
Is this way of eating right for you? I can’t answer that for you. But if you, like me, struggle with overindulging, it might be worth a try. My decision making process over what to eat has not only been simplified, but I have less opportunities for temptation. And this gives me freedom. If you would like more insight into whether this could be right for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Curley, Bob. “Why Sticking to the Same Foods Might Help You Lose Weight.” Healthline. n.p. 15 September 2018. Web.
Pinsker, Joe. “The People Who Eat the Same Meal Every Day.” The Atlantic. n.p. 7 March 2019. Web.