I think it is very important to keep a variety of foods in your diet for 2 reasons: (1) nutrition and (2) keep boredom at bay. When we get bored with our food, we tend to overeat. Those diet frozen meals do not have adequate nutrition for a meal. You need to add a vegetable and salad or piece of fruit.
There have been some studies done on this, and people that eat generally the same thing every day are more successful at weight loss. Also, the new book YOU The Diet notes this research and they suggest eating this way. If you go to the Maintainers forum, you'll read that some people also eat that way to keep their weight off - looking at food more as a fuel and less of a comfort or entertainment prevents some people from overeating.
I'd say i'm in the "phase" catagory. If I get a bug up my butt I can eat a batch of homemade hummus or yogurt cheese for days in a row. Like others I have my staples. I start every day with warm lemon/lime water, smoothies for breakfast that I can add different supplements to, a tossed field greens salad every day with either lunch or dinner, boneless/skinless chicken breasts, salmon, those types of things. I mix up things with different veggies, grains or beans.
I don't do it because something tells me I need to, it just works out that way. It's much quicker and easier. I cook things off, put them in the freezer and just grab as I want to.
I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. I have three different cereals that I like but I'll buy the same one for literally months at a time. On Fridays I switch it up and have oatmeal (but I'm even consistent about that--only on Fridays and pretty much every Friday). On weekends I go crazy and have bacon, an English muffin, and fruit. Again, same thing every weekend (except I've been thinking about replacing the bacon with grits on Sundays). Yep, I'm a wild woman!
For lunch, I mix things up a bit but I almost always have a cucumber, tomato, and raspberry salad with whatever else I'm having. For a long time, I had a PB&J every day (and you pretty much can't get a faster lunch than that).
I always have the same green salad with my dinner but I do make a lot of different entres.
I eat the same snacks every day. In the AM it's coffee or tea and sometimes some fruit. In the afternoon it's a fiber cake from Trader Joe's and after working out (usually late afternoon), it's a bowl of NF yogurt with raspberries. I finish every day with a cup of tea and sometimes a low cal pudding cup before going to bed.
One thing that helps me is making meals that last for multiple days. I'll frequently make something for lunch that will last three or four days. And anything I make for dinner absolutely has to feed us for two days. I have some recipes that feed us for three or four days (after the second or third day I usually freeze the rest in individual servings because my SO requires more variety in his diet). This gives me some quick meals that I can pull out of the freezer.
If you live near a Trader Joe's, they are a great source of low calorie, easy and quick to prepare foods. Some of the staples I rely on for quick meals include their frozen brown rice, pre-made Indian dishes, frozen salmon patties, Gerhardt's turkey sausage, pre-cut and washed veggies, and their pre-made salads. I don't get it from Trader Joe's, but pre-seasoned pork tenderloin is another super easy, low calorie meal. Just take it out of the package and stick it in the oven.
I think I could truly eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
My DH is in great shape, and any time he does need to lose weight, he does the same diet. 1 cup of any kind of cereal for breakfast with skim milk, and 1 cup of orange juice. For lunch its a turkey sandwich, with fat free cheese and fat free mayo on whole wheat bread, and for dinner he will eat a Lean Cuisne meal. Sometimes he'll snack on popcorn, but not much. He is actually a food scientist and he is always telling me to just eat the 1,000 calories a day and exercise.
Am I venting? Perhaps. I'm sorry. I did join this board to find support though, so I hope you don't mind. My original question had been, do any of you eat the same thing over and over day in and day out?
I would like to add, that for your current weight of over 200 pounds-1000 calories a day is WAY to little. You can start out at a higher calorie level than that and lose a couple pounds a week for a while. I would personally try about 1600-1700 a day and see what happens. 1000 calories is very low-I never go below 1200 on a regular basis-only on the occasional day where I don't have time to eat.
The more you weigh, the more calories you burn doing things. If a 200 pound woman, and a 130 pound woman both walk a mile-the 200 pound woman burns more calories doing the same thing, because she is carrying around 70 pounds more resistance. Start out at a higher calorie level-NOT 1000-and then when your weight loss slows down to 1/2 pound a week or less, drop it by 100 calories a day.
1200 calories is about the lowest you want to end up at on a regular basis-and this is when you are getting to the last 10-20 pounds.
I do eat the same things each day, pretty much. But when I'm no longer enjoying them, I mix it up and try something new. But for some reason I never get tired of my salad for lunch... I look forward to it each day.
When I lost weight on Weight Watchers (which is actually the last time I was "able" to lose weight, come to think of it) I ate pretty much the same thing every day--and it was almost identical to your husband's "diet."
I would eat:
Breakfast--1 c raisin bran, 1 c skim milk and 1 c orange juice
Snack--FF pudding cup & 1 apple, sliced not peeled
Lunch--Roast beef sandwich w/cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles (sometimes Subway and sometimes home-made) OR a BLT with 4 slices of bacon, romaine lettuce or spinach leaves and roma tomato with FF chips
Snack--yogurt cup or banana
Supper--Some kind of Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice (preferably a larger one)
Bedtime snack--usually an ice cream "treat"
The one "day off" meal I had was every Tuesday after weigh in--I'd eat tuna with REAL mayo and pickles with either King's Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (all FOUR in the small package) or a whole bag of Dorito's Wow's (which I think are "Light" now).
Anyway, I went from 236 to 208 eating that way. I was never hungry. Ask me why I stopped eating that way and gained all my weight back plus more...........I have no idea. I wasn't bored with those foods and when the new year starts I plan on trying to go back to that WOE and see what happens.
I eat the same breakfast every day - mostly because it took a loooong time to figure out what breakfast would keep my bloodsugar steady all morning. I eat oatmeal and an eggbeater omelet with light cheese. The only variation is what veggies are in the omelet, that varies by what I have prechopped in the freezer.
After that though, my days vary quite a bit, but for snacks and lunch I probably have a short list of "options" (like lunch almost ALWAYS starts with a salad) dinner is very varied. I dont do well with boredom or too much structure.
I eat the same breakfast everyday, I now mix 2 cereals together - Kashi go lean and quaker essentials crunch corn bran cereal.
I have about 3 or 4 different lunches that I choose from. And one of several dinners that I rotate as well. And I have 3 or 4 different snacks that I eat.
I am happy with my choices, they have the right nutrition counts. They are tasty. They satisfy me. They have the right number of calories, so I always know what they are and I don't have to be concerned that I'm overstepping my calories. I tjust makes it easier for me to plan my week and to stay on track.
I tend to have pretty much the same menu during the day for a week at a time. Dinner is different each day, but I'm lazy during the week, so I make a big batch of food on the weekend and portion it out into Gladware containers for lunches during the week, so I pretty much have the same lunches all week long, but a different one every week. My breakfasts are much the same--depending on my mood, it will be the same breakfast every day for a week or a month or so at a time (right now, it's usually a smoothie of skim milk, vanilla protein powder, and a frozen banana...last month, it was turkey sausage links). When I get bored or sick of something, I change it up for a while. The only meal that can vary drastically is dinner--I sometimes make pizza, chicken, pasta, turkey burgers, fat-free hotdogs, lean kielbasa, sandwiches...whatever strikes my fancy when I'm planning out my day in the morning
