Why David Lynch said eating the same meal every day helped spark his surreal creativity

David Lynch made some of the most startlingly surreal films to ever reach a mass audience. But his diet, at least for various stretches of his adult life, was comparatively normal—even uninteresting. There was one odd thing about it, though: He often ate the exact same thing every day—partly an attempt to create "habit in a daily routine," allowing his creativity to flourish.

The filmmaker, who died in January 2025, detailed that philosophy during a 2000 interview with journalist Charlie Rose. After a number of questions promoting his recently released drama The Straight Story, their conversation segued into food.

"I’m eating for lunch: tomatoes, tuna fish, feta cheese, and olive oil," Lynch said. "Every day…Yeah, it’s very good. [Laughs]. [For dinner], little pieces of chicken and broccoli [with] soy sauce. Every day, except when I travel, and then I go off that."

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Creature of habit

Asked if he’s a "creature of habit," the director immediately concurred. "When there's some sort of order there, then you're free to mentally go off any place," he said. "You've got a safe sort of foundation and a place to spring off from. It is very important for me [in the creative process]…The purer the environment, the more fantastic the interior world can be, it seems to me."

It’s a fascinating idea—that keeping some elements of your life as a blank slate can allow you to make a mess in other areas. One person in the YouTube comments seemed to agree: "I love the idea of repeating daily routines so that you create a habit, then once that foundation is laid and your mind doesn't need to think about 'what’s for lunch? What's for dinner?'" they wrote. "It has more space to spend thinking on more creative endeavors... really is an incredible idea."

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Seven years of Bob's Big Boy

This wasn’t the only time Lynch kept a strict eating routine. In various interviews, he’s talked about how, for a whopping seven years, he ate at the restaurant Bob’s Big Boy, ordering coffee and a particular kind of chocolate milk shake. He even went at the same time every day—2:30 p.m.—in order to get the most ideal shake temperature and consistency. He had it down to a science of sorts.

"If you came during lunch, they made so many of them that it never would get cold enough to be [like] ice cream," he said during a 2009 conversation with the Hudson Union Society. "It would be like soup. So I would go later, and it would be cold enough. It would be just right…I had these things for seven years with a cup of coffee, and I would write on the napkins. It was like having a desk. If you need paper, there’s a piece of paper, and you write on it when you get ideas." (He stopped eating them after climbing into a dumpster behind the restaurant, locating a carton, and becoming horrified by the ingredients.)

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Lunch routines

Lynch wasn’t the only person to enjoy a rigid menu. In a 2019 article for NBC News Better, ordinary folks explained why they preferred eating the same thing for lunch every day, from saving money to staying productive.

“I consider lunch kind of annoying, actually,” a self-employed musician named Mark Rust told the publication. “Knowing what I’m having, making it, and eating it takes no thought or energy, so I can get right back to what I’m doing.”

Of course, the health component may depend on what you’re eating. The Cleveland Clinic notes that "eating a nutritious diet with a lot of variety may lower your risk of mortality," citing a 2002 study of 59,000 women. The results: "Women who reported regularly consuming 16-17 healthy foods had a 42% lower all-cause mortality…compared to women reporting consumption of 0-8 healthy foods with any regularity."

Other prominent people have enjoyed consistency in other areas of life. As Forbes points out, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, for example, was known for his distinct outfit of a black turtleneck, blue jeans, and sneakers.

“Famous business people and politicians are known to be consistent with their wardrobe because it's their brand identity," author and Millennial Branding founder Dan Schawbel told the publication. "It's who they are, how they want to represent themselves and make a statement. It's not about what you wear, but what you accomplish."

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Clearing mental clutter

Eliana Bonaguro, a Florida-based licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) and anxiety disorders specialist, says Lynch's meal mindset made sense.

"As a therapist and an artist, I can definitely speak to this," Bonaguro says. "For me, having the same lunch every day (once it was bagels for lunch, then it became pumpkin soup) and rotating the same four dinners weekly has been a huge relief. It reduces stress and clears mental clutter. I often joke that I’m boring in the kitchen, but endlessly creative when I do art. The truth is, since I juggle everything else in life, this routine gives me space to focus on creating ideas."

Bonaguro adds that there's research to back this up.

"For example, psychologist Roy Baumeister’s research on ego depletion showed that acts of self-control and decision-making all draw from the same limited mental resource," Bonaguro says. "In his classic experiments, people who had to resist chocolates or suppress emotions gave up sooner on later tasks: they had less persistence left in the tank. The takeaway is simple: every choice we make costs us energy, and saving that energy leaves more juice for creative work. That’s also why creative genius Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day, and why David Lynch found comfort in the same meals. In my personal experience, the predictability and order of meals, the freedom from cluttered choices, create freedom in the mind. When the foundation is predictable, the creative world inside can expand."