How many times have you been on a diet that calls for repetitive eating practices to achieve your weight loss goals? Probably, a lot! Usually, diets are unpopular when they don’t provide a variety of foods that help one stay committed to an already restricted diet.
Well, a new study claims that women who eat the exact same food everyday eventually become so uninterested, they start eating less. The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “provides a very interesting new piece to the obesity puzzle by suggesting that meal monotony may actually lead to reduced calorie consumption,” says Shelley McGuire, who is a professor at Washington State University and a spokesperson for the American Society of Nutrition.
32 women took part in the study that monitored their eating on a daily or weekly basis. Researchers fed some of the women mac n’ cheese every day for three weeks in half-hour sessions as a reward for tasks around the lab. Others participated only on a weekly basis and ate mac n’ cheese also.
Women who ate mac n’ cheese everyday lost weight dramatically fast because of their reduced variety in food choices.
Whereas the women whose sessions were spaced one week apart were eating about 30 more calories a day by the study’s end, the researchers said.
These researchers are making the case that variety in supermarkets are increasing the chances of people making terrible decisions based on their craving for variety.
However, according to Fox News, some of the researchers are skeptical about their findings on how similar foods have to be to each other to produce the habituation effect. For example, they wrote, “Will someone show long-term habituation to consecutive meals of cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza and mushroom pizza?”
Whether it’s chicken and broccoli or tofu and spinach, it’s common sense that boredom and monotony will cause a decrease in overall excitement to eat. Hopefully this won’t catch on!
FrugiVoice: Could you eat the same food for over a month without cheating? Do you think it makes sense to eat like this? Sound Off!
I have done the master cleanse for a while now and I have ever minute of it after a few days. I can say though that after a few days on it youll lose your luster for eating. I was on it for almost 12 days and lost a lot of water weight but ultimately I gave it up. I could maybe do meat and veggies for a while but im sure that gets boring too