How to Stop Thinking About Food So Much
Daily Chase #42
Our culture celebrates novelty and excitement, and nowhere is that more apparent than when it comes to food.
We're bombarded with new recipes, trends, and exotic ingredients that promise to transform our eating experience.
Yet amid this noise, a powerful truth gets lost: simple, repetitive nutrition plans work best for most people.
Here’s the rub, though: The trade-off for simplicity in nutrition is boredom.
Having a basic template of meals you cycle through eliminates decision fatigue and creates consistency. You don't have to weigh and measure constantly because you already know what works.
The most successful nutrition plans often look mundane from the outside — the same breakfast options, similar lunch combinations, predictable dinners.
This doesn't mean your food must be tasteless or that you can never enjoy variety. Rather, it means recognizing that what we often interpret as "boredom" with our nutrition is actually craving the dopamine release from highly processed foods.
It's not that we're experiencing some new, unexplored taste; we're seeking the familiar rush from calorie-dense combinations we already know.
When you embrace a certain level of nutritional repetition, you free up mental bandwidth for other priorities in life. Your eating becomes automatic rather than a source of constant deliberation.
The most sustainable approach to nutrition isn't the most exciting —it's the one that disappears into the background of your life while consistently delivering the results you want.
(H/T EC Synkowski)
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This is so true! My husband always gives me crap because he thinks I eat the same thing all the time, but it’s basically only two of the same ingredients (chicken, and butternut squash). Then I change up the vegetables or I might add a quarter of a cup of basmati rice and now that corn on the cob is out, I’ll cut off half of an ear and add it to my lunch, which is a huge treat. Meal prep for me is a couple of hours on a Sunday and I freeze a couple of lunches so that by the end of the week I still have a lunch made. I alternate between three breakfast and then dinner is different all the time for everyone else. It makes life so much easier!