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ORIGINAL: GoddessManko

I see no harm in wanting a salad. Sometimes I'll boil a couple of eggs to have with it if it's late. I would google healthy recipes online. Replace white bread, sugar, pasta, and rice with brown. Try to get a lot of healthy fats in your diet like from beans (yes, lima beans) but also lentils, red beans. Maybe you might find joy in cooking. I do like others enjoying my food, it's nice to get complimented on something and it is healthier than takeout by far. I think we all have our weaknesses though, those never really go away but limiting yourself to "once a week I'll cheat" is important too. According to Dr Oz (not sure if true or not), sugar is more addictive than cocaine, so the more you eat, the more you crave. It's about changing up habits and methods. I love avocado, yogurt, peanuts. So I keep those around as my healthy snack alternatives. Fruits are great either with cheese or peanut butter and if you avoid heavy carbs at night you should be fine. The takeout stuff is addictive though, as is sugar, so it's not just you. Breaking habits are easier said than done but you can do it. If you take up cooking as a hobby it would help so much because then you can make foods that are tasty and healthy.

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart

Sadly I hate cooking, even simple stuff. But I might like crockpot cooking! And I love hunting for recipes. Just the making part, Is a different story.

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ORIGINAL: Gauge

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart

Sadly I hate cooking, even simple stuff. But I might like crockpot cooking! And I love hunting for recipes. Just the making part, Is a different story.

Learn to like it. Making bland, shit food is no fun at all. Making yummy tasty food is a blast. What is your motivation? If you don't like to cook and you have no excitement for it, then fast food is the easy solution. Fresh food tastes better, and it is better for you because you control what goes into it.

Watch cooking shows, go to YouTube and search for cooking for beginners and gain some confidence. It isn't rocket science, it is just cooking.

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart

Motivation how? Like what makes me wanna eat?

If so, Savory, maybe a wee bit sweet. Sometimes creamy
Appealing to the eye.

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart
this salad has 3 kinds of beans, kidney green and garbonzo, egg, carrot, cheese , and salami, and I put ranch on it, but I could go easy on the ranch.

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart

m struggling with wanting a salad from his place of work for dinner, however there is lima bean soup on the stove so I should not ask for food . I just am not finding it very tasty:/plus, I really need to learn to break this dependence / addiction on take out, specially if there's food at home

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ORIGINAL: NookieNotes

Along with what everyone else said, including having a reason and developing a passion for cooking, there are several things I have done to take control of my eating:

1. I only eat out with friends. Then, I enjoy it.

2. I don't bring processed food into my home. Nearly everything is fresh, or close to. I do use some canned foods, but without added sugars, etc.

3. I make a meal plan. Knowing what I will have every night, and knowing it's delicious makes it so much easier to eat the stuff that is good for me. This book helps:

Stop Eating Out

A lot. (I know the author, to be upfront.)

It sets out plans for eating fast (super-fast recipes), fresh (for foods in season, minimal cooking), and making food ahead (make a huge pot of chili, freeze the leftovers, mark calendar for when they get eaten, so they don't get lost in the freezer).

When I follow these steps, I have more energy, my skin looks great, and I stay in my ideal size easily.

Good luck!

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ORIGINAL: NookieNotes


1. I only eat out with friends. Then, I enjoy it.

2. I don't bring processed food into my home. Nearly everything is fresh, or close to. I do use some canned foods, but without added sugars, etc.

3. I make a meal plan. Knowing what I will have every night, and knowing it's delicious makes it so much easier to eat the stuff that is good for me.

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ORIGINAL: SweetForDaddy

God, so much self-discipline.

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ORIGINAL: ExiledTyrant

Evil Twin.

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ORIGINAL: Gauge



No, like why you want to break your fast food addiction.

Forget the appealing to the eye and figure out why you want to change your eating habits. No better motivation that I can think of than to use the reason you want to change for all the excitement and motivation you need.

Learn to like cooking first. Worry about how it looks when you like to cook.

Personally, I love to cook, I don't care about pretty, my food is delicious, and it isn't art. If you are a chef or entertaining friends, then give a small care to how it looks, if it is for you and your partner or close family for every day stuff... just get the food on the plate and enjoy it.

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ORIGINAL: Greta75

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart
this salad has 3 kinds of beans, kidney green and garbonzo, egg, carrot, cheese , and salami, and I put ranch on it, but I could go easy on the ranch.

That does not sound appetizing to me. I would eat MacDonald cheeseburger instead of that!!

There are only 2 types of salads I would eat that could replace fast food:
1) Spinach leaves, feta, dried cranberries with balsamic vinegar
2) Bocconcini balls, fresh cherry tomatoes, arugula leaves with balsamic vinegar again

Great salads! You'd not miss fast food! I salt and pepper my salads alot to taste too. And damn easy to make. No chopping needing, just dump everything in a bowl, drizzle vinegar and eat.

I think it's about finding healthy food that you really really love to eat. I don't think healthy food has to be tasteless. Just finding the right recipes.

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ORIGINAL: eulero83

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart

m struggling with wanting a salad from his place of work for dinner, however there is lima bean soup on the stove so I should not ask for food . I just am not finding it very tasty:/plus, I really need to learn to break this dependence / addiction on take out, specially if there's food at home

you are probably addicted to the taste of processed sauces and artificial aromas, you should give up with those and educate your thangue to feel other tastes, so give up ketchup, mayonnaise, soysauce and that kind of stuff you'll soon start to appreciate real food. If you want I can give you some recipes (italian food) that you can make in large amount during the weekend freeze it and then just boil or heat in the owen when needed, so you can split the effort in more confortable moments.

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ORIGINAL: UllrsIshtar

Except that that equation is flawed, and about 20 years outdates scientifically.

Weightloss isn't as simple as calories in versus out. For starters not all calories create the same amount of energy in the body. Calories from carbohydrates and sugar are pretty much 1 for 1 as far as the muscle energy they give you. They store well in both liver and fat cells, causing you to readily put on weight when having an excess of these.
Calories from protein and fat on the other hand (especially fat) do not easily become available to our body as energy. The chemical reactions we do to transfer them into available energy causes about a 30% loss in the process, making it so that 100 calories from bread are equivalent to only about 70 calories from butter.

Furthermore carbohydrates are very low in nutrient value for the amount of calories. To eat the equivalent amount of nutrient from most carb forms (breads, pasta, etc) as you would from steak and vegetables you need to eat about 6 times as much bread, and you will still end up deficient in certain minerals and vitamins.
Mineral and vitamin deficiencies cause you to become more hungry and less satiation, in an attempt to prompt you to eat more in order to make up the deficiency, causing you to acquire vastly more calories when eating carbs than you would eating protein and vegetables.

Then there is the fact that food which creates a blood sugar spike (like carbohydrates) causes our body to be more receptive to fat storage. When you have an excessive intake of calories combined with a blood sugar spike your body will readily store the excess as fat. When you have an excess of calories and no blood sugar spike, your body will store the excess in your liver, and when your liver is full store a limited amount of the excess as fat and dump the rest via your bowls. (I.E. eating excessive protein and fat will give you the runs... not make you fat...)

Lastly there is the issue of cutting down calorie intake below usage levels on a consistent basis. Doing this will cause your body to perceive starvation, and make it hunker down and expend less calories in an effort to conserve energy. Your metabolism will go down, and fat storage -when possible- will go up. Not only that, but your body will remain in this mode for weeks after you come out of 'starvation mode' and so, as soon as you resume eating 'normal' amount of calories, you will store excessive amounts of them for weeks after your diet. Much healthier than consistently eating less calories than you expend is to eat less calories than you expend on some days, and more calories than you expend other days.

The myth of 'calories in versus calories out' has done more damage to the Westen word than can be measured. Calories in versus out means NOTHING without talking about what type of calories you're putting in your body, the effects they have on your blood sugar, their objective value in terms of calorie/nutritional value, and the schedule with which you are consuming them.
It's really problematic when somebody who claims to care so much about people's overall fitness level would spread such dangerous misinformation as "the SAD (standard American diet) will make you healthy, if you only eat less of it" as it will not. At the most it will make you skinny while having dangerous levels of malnutrition that will cause an increase in all sorts of health issues and diseases at the same time.

People aren't designed to have 70% of their caloric intake come from low nutritional density foods such as carbs and refined sugars... ESPECIALLY not when they eat few enough calories of that low nutritionally dense food to have a weight/fat level in an 'acceptable BMI' range.

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ORIGINAL: NookieNotes

Along with what everyone else said, including having a reason and developing a passion for cooking, there are several things I have done to take control of my eating:

1. I only eat out with friends. Then, I enjoy it.

2. I don't bring processed food into my home. Nearly everything is fresh, or close to. I do use some canned foods, but without added sugars, etc.

3. I make a meal plan. Knowing what I will have every night, and knowing it's delicious makes it so much easier to eat the stuff that is good for me. This book helps:

Stop Eating Out

A lot. (I know the author, to be upfront.)

It sets out plans for eating fast (super-fast recipes), fresh (for foods in season, minimal cooking), and making food ahead (make a huge pot of chili, freeze the leftovers, mark calendar for when they get eaten, so they don't get lost in the freezer).

When I follow these steps, I have more energy, my skin looks great, and I stay in my ideal size easily.

Good luck!

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ORIGINAL: LittleGirlHeart
Yes. Meal plans, or rather lack of them, and snacks when out, have been my downfall!