More and more research is showing that putting a cap on the variety of foods and tastes you experience will help you control your weight. In Dr. Oz’s book, The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management, he devotes a chapter to the Pick and Stick strategy. Although I had been eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch (dinner is the same every day except on weekends), it was validating to read that I was doing something right.

At a wedding last weekend, I was excited by all the food choices at the buffet table. Instead of sticking to a serving of dense meat, vegetable, and fruit, I decided to put a few spoonfuls of different foods on my plate. I ended up with a plate with tiny piles of black eyed peas, turkey, baked fish, ambrosia, pineapple, apple slice, shrimp, and kiwi. While chatting with relatives for the next three hours, I hung on to this plate of food and dabbled in it every few minutes until it was gone. Late that night I reflected on my meal at the wedding and realized that how eating like that everyday could lead to weight gain.

The following is an excerpt from the chapter that explains the strategy:

Yeah, sure, variety may be the spice of life, but it also can be the death of dieting. When you have a lot of choices for a meal, it’s a lot easier to slip out of good eating habits, and into ham-induced bad ones. When you sit down at a diner and are presented with a menu that’s the size of a phone book, it’s easy to give in. One way to get away from fat bombs is to eliminate choices for at least one meal a day. Pick the one meal you rush through and automate it. For most people, it’s lunch. So find a health lunch you like—salad with grilled chicken and olive oil, turkey on whole-grain bread-and have it for lunch every day. Yes, every day.

Think of your dog: Penelope stays the same weight when she has her regular food every day. But as soon as she starts gorging on variety of nightly table scraps, the puny poodle looks more like a massive mastiff. How does Pick and Stick work? It seems that when you have meals rich in flavor variety, it takes more and more calories to keep you full (think of Thanksgiving, when you eat a lot of different things, stuff yourself, and still have room for pumpkin pie). So when we experience meals with lots of diverse flavors-think Mexican or Indian cuisine, we tend to eat more to satisfy our taste buds.

Now, we don’t want you to become bored with food, but if you make this a habit at least one meal a day, it’ll decrease your temptations and help you stop thinking about food so often. In fact, we usually prescribe two meals that are the same each day for our patients. It’s one of the ways to automate your brain so your habits follow. Of course, we don’t want you to stop enjoying diversity of flavors, but it will control your appetite.

Automate the Process: One of the reasons why we’re a society of shotputters instead of a society of milers is that we have millions of choices about what to eat. And while our variety is a win for the food industry, it is a miserable defeat for our waists. One of the ways that you’ll be able to reboot your body is by stripping away the millions of choices to automate your actions. You’ll eat essentially the same meals for breakfast, lunch, Snacks, and change up options for dinner. By decreasing the variety of food eaten throughout the day, you’ll decrease the chance for the hedonistic rampages that can be so dangerous.

Another trick: Use extra-light virgin olive oil, which has less flavor and may help control taste cravings.

I recently read an article that showed successful, long term losers of extra weight ate many of the same foods

for their meals.

One wrote of regular patterns of food.

She happened to eat tuna ...a lot...for her lunches. She was many years out from surgery and was healthy and kept off almost all her loss.

Her point seemed to be about less choices as noted above.

I do not have the article at hand...or I would pass the title along.

I liked the message though, and I do find my arsenal stays close to the same choices... For years...

Wondering about other tong termers and their choices... Or lack of??

Interesting information - thank you for posting!

I don't dispute the weight control aspects of the pick it and stick it approach.

However ... if we eat the exact same foods most of the time, we're also choosing to limit our nutrition to those foods' components (including their trace elements) and failing to realize the benefits of a broader diet (with additional trace elements and other nutrients).

Obviously, I'm not talking about expanding our diets to include a variety of slider foods.

Right now I'm entranced by apples. But I'm also trying to eat other fruits that are currently in season and vine-ripened, like peaches, strawberries, blackberries, cantaloupe -- foods that are delicious and nutrient-laden that I don't have access to year-round. So every week I'm trying to focus on one new fruit and one new veggie.

One thing I've observed is that for decades I haven't devoted much attention to my food choices or put much effort into choosing foods for their nutritional benefits. I just ate what was handy and what I was used to eating.

I'd now like to introduce much more healthy variety into my menus.

Thoughts?