Nutrition Nugget: Meals on Repeat

[00:00:27] So given what I do, I receive, uh, requests from media looking for experts to quote in their articles. And not long ago, there was one asking for experts to comment on a study that they say concluded eating the same meals on repeat aided weight loss. Now, I was traveling, so I missed their deadline. Lucky for us, though, we can look at it together now.

[00:01:24] The average BMI of the participants at the beginning of the study was 34.5. The researchers then monitored them for 12 weeks of a behavioral weight loss program. The participants submitted food logs and the researchers looked at two factors. The first... Actually, I think we'll come to this in a second in my notes.

[00:02:13] So that's caloric stability. The second thing was dietary repetition measured by the percent of unique foods tracked versus the percent of foods logged 10 or more times. So they wanted to know whether these two factors, the caloric stability and the meals on repeat, the repetitive foods, predicted weight loss.

[00:02:57] So participants were randomly assigned to either, [00:03:00] A, standard condition in which they attended weekly group sessions, or, B, an optimized group where an algorithm said whether they should have a group session, a call, or a message in any given week. Now, before I get to the findings- I think that's weird.

[00:03:41] So I really have no idea on that. But okay, what'd they find? So the mean or the average weight loss was 5.6% of their body weight, and they had an average of 78.8 days of valid tracking over the 12-week [00:04:00] period. Excluding beverages and condiments, 41% of the entries were unique foods. About 60% of entries were then tracked multiple times.

[00:04:36] And I'm sort of like, great, we know that. That also wasn't part of what you were looking at in the study, but whatever. Okay, going to their hypotheses. So caloric stability and weight loss. They found that lower average calorie deviation predicted higher 12-week weight loss, but then they also saw that greater weekend [00:05:00] versus weekday calorie discrepancy was associated with higher weight loss.

[00:05:33] They also saw the percentage of foods logged more than 10 times was positively associated with weight loss. For every 10% increase in proportion of foods that were tracked more than 10 times, weight loss increased by 1.6%. Participants whose food entries were the majority repeats, they had an average weight loss of 5.9%, versus those whose entries were the majority [00:06:00] unique foods had an average weight loss of 4.3%.

[00:06:38] So a few flags for me in this. The current study did not look at the quality of the foods At all. So they're not accounting for the healthfulness of the repeated foods. They just said that lower variety predicted weight loss when all the foods are considered [00:07:00] together. They do admit that more research is g- is needed, and they do admit that they didn't look at this.

[00:07:30] After 12 weeks, they only did it for 12 weeks because after 12 weeks is when tracking tends to fall off. That's also when people are going to get bored. So like, if we're not looking at this, and the 4.3% versus 5.9% weight loss, so we're looking at those first 12 weeks of a program. Well, what if, if you had more variety and it was 4.3% in 12 weeks over and over and over, versus [00:08:00] 5.9% in the first 12 weeks and then it went to 2 or 3% the 12 weeks after that, which one actually, this is like a bad math problem from middle school, right?

[00:08:40] Because if I'm not eating those handful of meals or foods, then I must be off. You know, we start to associate it that that's what looks like when we're on, and anything other than that is off. I think for them to not look at the quality of the calories and only to look at the calories themselves [00:09:00] as totals is a major caveat.

[00:09:29] The other piece that they do include there as a qualifier is that there might be certain personality traits of the people who still tracked on the weekends that then skews the data of what they have of the difference between weekdays and weekends. So I think this study comes with a major caveat. At the same time, I think if they were to repeat this or do something again, I would love a lot more qualitative data.

[00:10:20] And the last piece, finally, I'll say, I appreciate that they do remind us That this study is correlational, not causal. They say causality cannot be assumed in the observed relationship. So again, things that tend to move in the same direction are correlated, not necessarily that one creates the other. And maybe that's the takeaway is that all of the headlines that come out of the studies make us think or sort of imply this causal relationship, but like this one, that's not quite the case.[00:11:00]

[00:11:18] options too in the long run. And yet for a period of time, I think it can be really helpful. Well, there you have it, meals on repeat, or don't. Well, as always, everybody, I'm your host, Jenn Trepeck. Connect with me on Instagram or all social media. I'm @jenntrepeck, J-E-N-N-T-R-E-P-E-C-K. Website is asaladwithasideofries.com.

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