to eat the same breakfast and lunch every single day?

[NorthernGirlie]

I didn't realise it was weird until a colleague pointed it out. Disclaimer - the colleague is a friend, we were just chatting - she wasn't criticising!

Every week I pot up 5 lots of overnight oats (literally just oats and a spoon of trail mix) and have 1 a day for breakfast

I cook a chicken on a Sunday and have a chicken, pease pudding and stuffing sandwich every day for lunch.

I use the rest of the chicken in a family meal, sometimes dh will make himself a sandwich with it.

I've been doing this for about 2 years straight. Every single work day - never given it a thought!

How weird am I?

It sounds boring to me but each to their own. Are you getting enough fruit & veg in your diet? It’s good to have a wide variety of plants in your diet, so I don’t think eating the meals you describe every day is going to achieve that.

In what way is it "good for you" ? Just wondering.

Surely that's common knowledge? Veg, fruits, nuts and seeds all contain different vitamins, minerals and chemical compunds which are beneficial to health.

I eat yoghurt, fruit and granola most days for breakfast. Sometimes a boiled egg or avocado on toast. Lunch is often soup, or cheese and a cracker. Not always the same soup and there's usually a choice of cheese in the fridge, so it's not dull. Been doing this for nearly 60 years and not dead yet!

its not great for your microbiome you probably don’t have a varied gut bacteria population which is what we need to build a strong immune system and keep our bodies as healthy as possible.

We should be getting 30 different fruit, veg, nut, seeds a week. If Out of 21 meals, 14 are exactly the same, you aren’t giving your gut much of a chance to introduce new beneficial bacteria by eating a variety of foods.

If you just added a revolving selection of dried fruit/seeds/nuts to the breakfast and a selection of fruit or chopped veg to the lunch it would make it much healthier.

Have you read the info about varied diet and gut health?

When I worked away I used to eat the same breakfast and lunch everyday as buying variety for the week was too expensive or involved transporting too much stuff back and forth.

So yoghurt and berries for breakfast, cheese and avocado and sweet chilli wraps for lunch plus carrot sticks with hummus and apple and peanut butter.

A lot of variety in food is a very modern phenomenon. When I was young in the 1950’s we always had the same breakfast ( bacon, egg, toast) , it was a protein filled meal so that neither of my working parents had to worry much about lunch. (Lucky them, school dinners 🤢). We had a rota of ‘tea’ which would now be called supper I suppose, it changed with the day but was pretty similar week on week.

My grandparents thought this was a lot of variety! My paternal GF took the same sandwich to his work every day ( don’t know what GM ate), the other was a farmer so slightly more influenced by what they were growing / rearing at the time but still heavy on bread and potatoes every day for energy.

If you read recollections such as Lark Rise to Candleford, you will see labourers and tradesmen ( that is, almost everyone) ate the same meals virtually every day, and that all the households ate the same very restricted diet.

It sounds boring and unusual rather than weird. Maybe not the breakfast so much, I think many people have toast or cereal most days, but I couldn’t do the same lunch every day.

I have the same breakfast every day two slices of granary toast with butter one with home made marmalade two cups of milky coffee fruit mid morning, salad for lunch lots of veggies but might add egg one day cheese another leftover chicken etc. about twice a week I have soup
Dinners are on a rotation of about 2 weeks

It’s not the repetition that would concern me, it’s the six-day-old chicken. It’s probably a bit past its best by Friday.

I have the same breakfast (plain yoghurt and granola) every single weekday, and more often than not the same sandwich for lunch, accompanied by an apple and some crisps.

If we have leftovers from dinner I might once in a while have those for lunch, but not often.

Not weird at all, I like the routine!

I have questions.

1. What are you eating in the evenings and at the weekend? Because I can’t see how you’re really eating any fruit and veg otherwise.
2. Does the Sunday chicken form the basis of your Sunday roast, or is cooked specifically for sandwiches?
3. If the former, do you have kids? If so, are they not sick to death of the same chicken every weekend? And what about DH? Does he eat the same things as you?
4. If you’re eating the chicken for Sunday lunch, how are you getting this many sandwiches out of it as well? Is the famous Mumsnet Chicken that feeds a whole family for six months?
5. Pease pudding in a sandwich. WHAT?

I wouldn’t want to eat the same thing every day for years on end. But ultimately, it’s absolutely nobody’s business but yours and you should totally have whatever you like for your own lunch! Is it weird? Well, a little bit, yes. But there’s nothing wrong with that!

Maybe you should do some sort of salad instead of the pease pudding at least some weeks or add some crudités. Most people don’t vary their breakfasts very much so I don’t find it all that odd.

Sandwich sounds bloody lovely. Not weird.

I feel the same. Six day old cooked chicken, yuk. I imagine it is dry and flavourless.

I would never have considered pease pudding something you could put in a sandwich!

But as others have said, it’s your life and if you’re healthy go forth and prosper.

I couldn’t do it, personally. I can’t even bring myself to go to bed at the same time or drive the same route to work—i’m truly averse to routine! I often think it must be easier!

I wouldn’t eat chicken on a Friday that I had cooked on the Sunday! You’re obviously fine on it but it doesn’t sound very fresh.

I quite like eating the same a few days running but teenage dc won’t even if it’s something they really enjoyed. I find that weird in itself.

I find I have weeks like this otherwise food just goes off, I find it boring but otherwise Im throwing things away

Please pudding?

I thought that was just something from nursery rhymes!

How do you make it, is it just like a sort of mushy pea spread that you put on the bread? Hot, cold, or 9 days old, ha ha!

Mark Zuckerberg is well known for wearing essentially the same outfit every day to cut down on “decision fatigue”, if it works for him..

That was the point of pease pudding I thought, you could slice it and shove it between bread.

I have mixed feelings about this because at the moment I'm having v similar meals daily.
For breakfast I have weetabix & coffee
For lunch I mostly have soup from the canteen in work. With brown soda bread. They vary the type of soup daily & if its one I don't like (potato & leek) ill get a brown bread sandwich with egg mayo, lettuce, tomato & cucumber. That's not b often as I mostly have the soup.

We have a variety of dinners & we eat lots of vegetables plus I eat fruit - satsumas, grapes, apples & bananas at the moment.

I drink water throughout the day.

It's working for me to control weight & takes thinking about it away & it's v cheap as soup in the canteen is inexpensive. It's also warming in the middle of the day in this v cold weather

Honestly I don't think I could eat chicken on Friday that had been cooked on Sunday though...

I'm the same. I'm not sure if I consider it weird. I don't worry about other people's opinions.

Other people who need to opine about your eating habits are the real problem.

I eat practically the same food every morning and lunchtime.
I only change my evening meal to eat the same as the rest of the family

It’s decision fatigue.

I don’t eat breakfast and have a half portion of school lunch every day (teacher) so I don’t have to think about it. I also have variations of similar work outfits for each season. Between the children I teach and my own children, I must make hundreds of decisions every day so I just can’t add any more. Luckily husband does all the cooking and food shopping at home, otherwise we would eat a lot of scrambled eggs and bacon.

Modern life seems to have made some things much easier for us and some things much much harder.

Pease pudding is the food of gods. If I've cooked a gammon I make my own with the brine but usually I buy a pot of Dicksons pease pud in Tesco!

I don't usually use the chicken on a Sunday roast, I cook it in the air fryer late Sunday night. The extra gets used in a stir fry or something on a Tuesday night!