What's amazing about this method is that if you do it correctly, you can eat as much as you want anytime you are hungry, and still lose weight. It is also the simplest, easiest diet imaginable (other than completely going without food as with intermittent fasting). This method turns the idea of "monotony" from something negative into something positive -- an effective weight loss tactic.

Here's what you do:

Pick one single food item.
Eat nothing but that food any time you are hungry.
Do it for an entire day (or more; see below).

If this sounds wacky, read the Background Information section below for some eye-opening scientific studies that prove why and how this works.

What kind of food?

That's part of the trick. The main requirements are:

Something that you like enough to eat over and over, but don't like too much
Ideally it should be highly filling but low in calorie density which means high fiber, high protein or both. High water content can help too.

You can prepare the food with some non-caloric seasonings, or if you're careful, a small amount of fat.

You can drink as much water as you want, or other non-caloric drink.

Examples:

(Pick one) Beans, potatoes, some kind of lean meat (fish, chicken, etc), some kind of low-fat dairy, some kind of fruit (melon, berries, etc), vegetable juice, among many others
Any Weight Loss Food should work well*

* If a high carb item makes you feel yucky you can easily switch to something else. It also helps to spread out a high carb item more evenly throughout the day. (See Carb Tips for more on this subject.)

What about eating a treat or junk food for the single item? Well, again, if you eat the same thing over and over, no matter what it is, you tend to get tired of it and eat less. Doing this with junk food isn't necessarily recommended because you would be eating low value food that provides little nutritional value, and possibly feeding addictions. Don't try it long term. You could do it for a day as an experiment. Because treats are easier to overeat, you would want to track your calories to make sure the Uniformity effect is working (meaning that you're eating at a calorie deficit). Be wise and careful with this idea.

How long?

You can do it for a single day if you want. Or 3 days in a row. Or longer if it's a nutritionally-complete food or recipe. The type of food you choose makes a difference.

The more nutritionally complete the food (protein, vitamins, minerals) the more consecutive days you can do it, because you will be satisfying your body's nutritional requirements. With an array of complete nutrition coming in, your body feels less need to trigger hunger pangs. High-fiber also helps. Examples are potatoes and beans.

If you only want to do it for a short time, like 1 or 2 days, and you want the best results (more weight loss), you're better off picking a "Free" food or a Very Low CD food from the Weight Loss Foods Chart. For example: grapefruit or melon, among many other choices. The great thing about choosing a single Very Low CD food is that your calorie intake will be almost like a fasting day (see Intermittent Fasting) but you're still eating as much as you want!

With this strategy, you may still experience psychological hunger or psychological cravings for more variety, but not true hunger (biological).

So if you plan to follow a strict Uniformity Method for more than a week or so, you would probably want to incorporate some psychological breaks (see Flex Meals in the Diet Vacation section). If you're losing a lot of weight, then taking metabolic breaks can help too.

Variations of the Method

Alternating Foods: One concept that makes it easier to do this method over multiple days in a row is to pick a different food to eat every day. Or, you could eat the same food for one or two days in a row, then a different food for the next one or two days. Whatever works well for you is fine.

Different varieties of the item: If you just can't stand eating the exact same thing, you could allow yourself different varieties of the same category. For example, more than one kind of fruit, or more than one kind of beans, etc. The lower the variety the better (ideally, just ONE thing) but this tactic can still work because the overall variety is still low.

Recipe with ingredients: If you use the exact same food, then a recipe or multiple ingredients are okay. For example, a single soup recipe or a smoothie recipe that you eat over and over.

Magic Meal: Pick one meal/recipe, and eat the exact same thing for every meal (same veggies, same meat). (See Magic Meals)

You'll notice that repeating a specific recipe or a Magic Meal is a similar concept to Standardized Meals; the only difference is that you are limiting the variety to just ONE meal.

Buffets: This isn't really a weight loss strategy but it allows you to eat at a buffet without too much damage. It goes like this: simply decide (and commit to) eating only a few items (maybe 2 or 3 items) that you feel would make a satisfying meal. You can eat as much of those items as you want, but ONLY those 2 or 3 items. You'll walk away full and satisfied while eating a lot fewer calories.

Background Information - Why and How This Works

It should come as no surprise that we eat more (a lot more) food if it is highly "palatable" meaning it brings us more pleasure. If it tastes good, it activates the reward centers in our brain. This is particularly true for food that is dense in easily digested calories (see Trigger Foods for more). We also tend to eat more if we are presented with a large variety of foods.

Sensory-Specific Satiety and the Buffet Effect

Satiety is another word for the sense of fullness we feel after we eat. Sensory-specific satiety refers to our ability to feel "full" or done eating certain foods that taste the same. Basically, we become completely full and satisfied based on the taste (for example sweet, salty, sour, or fatty). After eating a certain food that tastes the same, we become temporarily "habituated" to that food and our body naturally tells us it's time to stop eating. Yet if other kinds of food that taste very different are available, our body says "go ahead". That's one reason why we can fill up at a meal yet miraculously find room for dessert (the sense of sweet).

Many different studies have shown that if a wide variety of food is presented to us at a meal, we'll eat more, and gain weight. That's called the buffet effect. We tend to eat more (a LOT more) at all-you-can-eat buffets. Our brains don't have the chance to habituate or get tired of any specific food. That's also why we eat more at Thanksgiving!

A Fascinating Study

A very interesting and unusual study was published in 1965 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Volunteers were given access to a liquid food dispensing machine and allowed to consume as much of it as they wanted, but no other food. The liquid food was dispensed in even amounts through a tube after pressing a button. It provided a full spectrum of nutrients, but it was completely bland -- having virtually no taste, variety or smell -- so it had essentially zero food reward value. Experiments were done in a hospital in order to ensure complete adherence to the instructions.

The first experiment was done with two lean (not overweight) people. With no intervention or guidance, and eating as much as they wanted, they maintained their weight for the duration of the experiment (9 days and 16 days).

Another experiment was done with an obese female and an obese male, each around 400 pounds.

As before, they were instructed to obtain food from the machine whenever they were hungry (meaning they could eat as much of it as they wanted). The results were shocking. The female participant ended up consuming only 144 calories per day over 12 days and lost 23 pounds. The male participant ate only 275 calories per day (less than 10% of his usual intake) over 70 days, and lost roughly 70 pounds. He was then sent home and asked to continue consuming the formula but no other food, which he did for another 185 days, steadily losing a total of over 200 pounds (half his body weight). Even more remarkably, the researchers noted that he never once complained of hunger.

Other follow up studies had similar results -- proving that a bland liquid diet causes people to automatically eat fewer calories and lose fat.

Potato Diet

Have you heard of the "potato diet"? In 2010, Chris Voigt, the director of the Washington State Potato Commission, decided to eat nothing but potatoes for 60 days. He embarked on the diet to prove the nutritional value of potatoes, having grown tired of the tuber's negative reputation. He cooked the potatoes in various ways, and ate them along with some non-caloric seasonings and sometimes a small amount of cooking oil.

In order to meet his calorie needs and avoid losing weight, he figure he needed to eat up to 20 potatoes a day. In spite of a valiant effort to AVOID losing weight, he ended up losing 21 pounds over 60 days, because he just wasn't hungry! Sure, he was tired of eating the same thing but he was never hungry. Furthermore, a doctor's checkup before and after the diet showed improved health markers including blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol. (As you can imagine, the diet sparked a multitude of copycat rapid weight loss diets based on potatoes.)

Palatability Study: 44% More Calories

One study at Sam Houston State University conducted by John de Castro demonstrated that people eat 44% more calories at meals they describe as highly palatable, compared to meals they describe as bland. Let's do the math -- it means you are likely to eat 1080 calories of a highly palatable meal but only 750 calories of a "bland" meal ... over 330 more calories.

That is a massive potential increase of calories over time that our bodies really don't need. Why does this happen? Because our brain perceives highly palatable food as so valuable that it motivates us to keep eating even if we are overflowing with calories.

Putting it All Together

Clearly, what this means is that a particularly effective strategy for losing weight without hunger is to reduce palatability and variety.

The more susceptible you are to the "food reward" effect (see Trigger Foods) where you are both highly motivated by food and impulsive (lack of self control), the more likely this will be a very effective strategy for you. But it's effective for almost anybody.

According to the theory, if you were to only eat food that was more toward the bland side, and especially if there was limited variety, you could eat anytime you felt hungry and you wouldn't gain weight.

In reality, reduced palatability (relative to junk food) is at least part of the reason for the success of Weight Loss Foods. Not that highly nutritious foods can't taste great, even delicious... but they're not over-the-top delicious like treats or Trigger Foods are.

Likewise, if you were to severely limit the variety of food you eat, you'd probably lose weight without feeling hungry. You can only eat so much of any specific food item before you get tired of it, even if it tastes really good. You will feel biologically full and naturally stop eating.

Side Benefit: Easy Calorie Counting

Although one benefit of the Uniformity Method is that you don't have to track anything, when you limit variety it becomes a lot easier to track calories consumed. Figure out the calories in the food item you're eating and then simply multiply it by the number of times you eat it. If you've used the Diet Calculator to figure out your maintenance calories, you will know very precisely how much of a caloric deficit you are in for the day (keeping in mind the diet calculator is just an estimate). Even if it's unlikely, counting total calories is also a way to double check that you're not overeating the Uniformity food you've chosen.

Likewise, limiting variety and easier calorie tracking is another benefit to eating Standardized Meals.