Either Junk Food or No Food at all

This is exactly my problem. I've been trying to control my unhealthy eating habits, and i have managed to do it succesfully. I mean i don't eat junk food anymore. The problem is...i don't eat healthy food either!

So everyday i know i'm not supposed to have certain things, and i also know i'm supposed to get like 1200 cals a day, but (i know some of you will jump in indignation at this) I FIND VEGGIES BORING! this sounds utterly childish i know, but healthy food...I just don't feel like eating it! so i'm having like 600 cals a day (which is WRONG, i know!!) But can't bring myself to have a salad, for example. CC gives me good grades, but i think it probably is because of the percentages, more than the amount of calories i do eat ( i know it's too little).

So there i am...sitting in front of a mountain of lettuce, and suffering like a 4 year old girl...

So don't eat lettuce. Stay away from sald.

Why don't you start with eating 1200 calories, plain and simple. Get up to a healthy amount of calories.

Then, start making small, manageable changes. :) Perhaps work on eating whole wheat pasta instead of regular pasta.

One small change at a time.

i was one who did not like veggis before and started to look for ways i thought tasted good some times not the best ways to eat them but i look at it this way . if i eat it with alittle bad i still have to get som benifets from it

1 thing i found i liked is broccli with ranch dressing or blue ceese

try doing things like that and you might find you like some of them if they are not so plain.

I hate eating plain veggies too. What I do is sneak them into my regular food. Example - I'll cook a dish, casserole, what have you, and add a little extra veggies to it. Maybe an onion or some celery. That seems to work for me. Don't force yourself to eat salad if it's going to seem like a punishment to you.

If you get into cooking, you'll find that a lot of dishes have vegetables in them, but it's not as hard to eat them when they're part of something else. Does that make sense?

well, what are some of the foods that you do like?

some foods might take a while for you to get a taste for.  before you know it you will be craving some of the healthy stuff.  kinda like after you give up the junk food and have some again, you get sick and don't know how it is taht you ate that before. 

sometimes you just need new recipes or ways of cooking the food to make it more appealing to you.  there are many excellent cooks on here that can give you some great suggestions and ideas

I don't like veggies alone, either.  So, I combine them with something.  A bite of chicken with a bite of veggie.  A bite of chili, spaghetti, mac & cheese sandwich, slice of pizza, or whatever, with a bite of veggies.  Also, I cook mixed frozen veggies in chicken broth for added flavor, then drink the broth.  Filling and low calorie.  Doing this minimizes the the amount of calorie-dense entree I am having and gets my veggies in.

try pureeing veggies into sauces like marinaras, that way you get the benefits of the vegetables without really being able to taste or see them.  Also pureed in soups is great too. 

try roasting veggies instead of boiling them or having them raw.  it brings out a nice slightly sweeter flavor.

or play with dips.  have raw veggies with salsa or hummus.

Try spicing some veggies up a bit? With herbs etc. Low fat dressings can really make a salad more edible too. Just look for healthy things you do like, it doesn't have to be all veg :)

The greatest thing I've found to get me to eat my veggies is to go to the produce stands or grow it myself. When the stuff actually tastes good it's much easier to eat. My way to make unpallatable veggies taste good is to make them into fajitas or BBQ them.

Try your broccoli with cheese on it! That's always been a favorite of mine! You might even want to try super sweet white corn (Sam's choice brand from Wal-Mart) and mix it with peas. YUM! The sweet corn is so good, that if you add another veggie to it, it's pretty good. Also, you can steam some carrots and add a hint of maple syrup to them, or a hint of brown sugar melted with margerine. You could even do a baked potato with steamed broccoli, cheese and light sour cream. Or you could even buy one of those pre bagged stir fry veggies, and have stir fry with chicken, and I always add whole wheat spaghetti to mine to make it like lo mein. YUM!

Dont know if this will help but here it goes:

Dont let anyone tell you that you HAVE to eat raw vegetables.  Cooked ones are just as good.  Personally I HATE cold raw vegies.  They litterally make me gag.  For the longest time I would force myself.  THen I looked up alot of veggies in their cooked and uncooked states here on CC, and found that I CAN eat hot cooked veggies!  I was so thrilled.  Now i'm eating stuff like squash, cooked pease and carrots, stir frys with celery and broccoli. 

But if you hate All vegetable (my brother loathes them) you can try little tricks to get your servings in, like stir frys or blending them up and adding them to plain pasta sauce, if you dont add too much you wont even taste it.

What about "interesting salads."  Like adding blackberries and grapes and low fat cheese and having it with a vinigrette.  Thats how I eat lettuce....

Hope this helps, good luck in your quest to eat veggies!

I use to be such a fast food/ junkfood junkie until about a few months ago when I decided I really needed to change.  I was also the pickiest eater you would ever meet, never had salads, veggies (except for baby carrots), anything that was healthy really.  If you put a tomato in front of my face, I would panic and my throat would close up because I literally was scared to try new foods.  However I got so desperate to lose weight that I started trying a bunch of new foods and when I actually started to lose the weight quivkly because of my diet change, I really started to enjoy them, and tried even more!  I developed weird habits for eating healthy foods.  Like if I wanted something spicy, I would microwave up a bunch of mushrooms and other raw veggies and add spicey seasonings to them.  I can't eat salads unless I microwave them and add seasonings, but that's just me and I know it's weird but who cares!  I lost 30 pounds that way!

stir fry your veggies using a non stick spray instead of oil and add some garlic and ginger a little chinese 5 spice, yummy and not quite cooked but not raw either.  I also like a little salad cream on my steamed veg to add something.   And low cal salad dressing is definitely the way to go on salads, can't stand em plain....or just good old vinegar on salads also.

I do not like veggies either and I don't eat them.. I eat other healthy foods like oatmeal, lots of fiber and protein and gets different foods so I get my 1200 kcal  a day and still gets healthy foods..

Here is a list of The World's Healthiest Foods

As you can see, there is plenty to choose from.  If you click on each food you'll get a complete nutritional analysis and facts about that food.

Use this list as your base.

Heh! this list is so cool!
after a couple of months i'm in love with boiled broccoli. :D

Thanks everyone! I followed your advice (stirfried, mixed, reasoned) and well...thanks!!!

Hi, I can relate to you on this.

I can't stand lettuce! I'd never eat a salad as the base is well... lettuce!  A few weeks ago I had a brainwave of replacing lettuce with raw red cabbage as I really enjoy that. 

It's worked really well for me as I now enjoy a nice healthy salad.

:-) At last!!

Throw some juices in there, i have a glass of V8 Splash berry in the morning for breakfast, cant afford real fruit all the time.

I used to find vegetables boring just because I prepared them the same way all the time. I needed variety to keep me eating them, once I got that down, I actually crave vegetables now.

I lucked out that I have a Japanese boyfriend, so he eats a lot of veggies by nature, and thus knows many ways to prepare them. One of my favorite ways to make green beans is to parboil them until they are soft, and then saute them with minced garlic and ginger paste and a little bit of Mirin (sweet rice wine). Very yummy. He also taught me how to make vegetable dumplings with wonton wrappers. I'll see if I can find the recipe.

Someone here mentioned roasting your veggies, and I would highly recommend that also. Veggies become so sweet when they are roasted. My favorites are red bell pepers, zucchini and carrots.

I've also found that broadening my culinary horizons, so to speak, helps me learn about new combinations of flavors to add. I made a vegetable tajine a few weeks ago with cumin and tumeric. It was wonderful and definitely not boring.

Surf the internet for some exotic cuisines that might give you some new ideas and inspiriation to breath life back into your vegetables :D

Frozen fruit or veggies are almost as good as the great fresh ones and far superior to the low quality fresh ones.  Not to mention a lot easier to deal with and they don't spoil.  Go to Trader Joe's or some other specialty store, a pound of frozen broccoli is $1.09 per bag.  I happen to love broccoli, make a stir fry with shrimp or seafood and add some soy sauce or butter and garlic to make it taste better.

Make brown or wild rice and mix it in with your favorite steamed vegetable (microwave cooking is so much easier for veggies) or you can steam them in the top of a rice cooker.  Add a bit of sauce or gravy or butter to make it more interesting.  Get the baby vegetables as they are more tender and often sweeter...avoid canned vegetables as they are often just plain nasty.

After all this time, i've discovered i love broccoli too!

So far i think i have learnt to tolerate them,, and i  have used many of your tips!!!

Thank you so much