My diet isnt great but i dont like much foods

[hatehealthyfood]

I'm in my thirties and for as long as I can remember my diet hasn't been great. I'm not overweight however but I worry now im in my thirties it might not be long until I am!!

The problem is my relationship with food, I only seem to like certain foods and I actually think this has gotten worse with time, not better!

I realise I tend to only eat very 'carby' foods. Such as pasta, potato based food, doughy or bready type foods. I feel like the most goodness I eat comes from tomato and veg sauces I put on pasta. I also have a takeaway about twice a week and this will usually be chinese, indian or a pizza. Sometimes Chips.

A typical day might be for me Breakfast - Bran with milk. Lunch time - Pasta or noodles. Tea time - Frozen pizza, spag bol, more pasta, Sausage with chips and egg, chilli con-carne with rice. Snacks - A chocolate bar, maybe a biscuit. Drinks are usually tea or water.

I don't tend to like 'cold' foods, so dislike salads, cold meat, cold sandwiches. If I have to eat a cold sandwich it would mostly likely be cheese (again really unhealthy...) The only vegetables I would ever really eat would be things like Raw carrot, cucumber, peppers, mushrooms. I'm not keen on fresh tomato, lettuce.

I'm quite a busy person so sometimes I eat like this through convenience, I work full time and get home late so its easy to put a ready meal in the microwave rather than mess up the kitchen.

I'm stuck in a rut. But im more and more aware the older I get, I cant keep this up. Has anybody been in the same boat and how did you overcome?

Do you have a freezer? If so, how about you cook yourself some things from scratch with veg in the sauces, portion them up and freeze them so you can microwave something you've made yourself? I buy frozen veg to minimise waste and it has the added bonus of being higher in nutrients than a lot of fresh veg because it's frozen soon after picking - things like frozen sliced peppers, frozen spinach, etc work well in curries and stews. You can add sweetcorn to chilli.

Honestly I have had to to force myself to eat broccoli and asparagus. I don’t like the taste and so I hide them in spaghetti Bol and with cheese. I also fry them with garlic. It helps.

Try to start making some small changes to get more whole foods and vegetables into the meals you already eat. Substitute white pasta and bread for wholemeal, white rice for brown, normal potatoes for sweet potatoes. Add finely chopped, grated or blended veggies to your mince based dishes.

Then you can start to alter the meals a bit. If you like chilli maybe try it in stuffed peppers. If you like noodles then try some out some different vegetables in a stir fry.

DH and I used to eat pretty badly in our 20s (little or no fruit or veg most days ) but we've made small changes over time and realised there are a lot of healthier foods we really enjoy. Eating fajitas we realised we actually liked peppers and onions so then we tried them in pasta bake, then tried them roasted in a tray bake, then in a wholemeal cous cous salad. Your eating can start to evolve when you try things and find new foods you like. And we feel so much better for eating well, which is motivation to keep eating better.

Look on BBC good food for some recipe ideas or watch some cookery programmes. Try some new vegetables and remember there are lots of tastier ways to cook them instead of boiling or steaming. Target adding a few veggies a day and increase.

Time is a big limitation so try to get some ideas up your sleeve for really quick meals you can do in the time it takes to cook your ready meal. Our favourite ten minute meals are microwave jacket potatoes with tuna and sweetcorn or beans and cheese, egg fried rice using a packet of microwave rice and spring onions/peas/peppers or an omelette with lovely fillings. If you have some really tasty, easy ideas up your sleeve you'll be less likely to turn to a takeaway or ready meal. Once you get to grips with cooking some healthier meals then batch cooking is so useful. It tends to not take much longer to cook a double portion so I always cook extra and bung some in the freezer for busy days :)

Just sneak some fruit and veg in there. You could put blueberries and/or bananas on your breakfast bran, have peas or baked beans with your sausage, chips and egg, put spinach, mushrooms snd extra tomatoes on your pizzas etc. Maybe try snacking on hummus and carrot sticks, nuts or yoghurt occasionally instead of chocolate.

Do you like soup, could you have that at lunchtime with bread roll?

I echo the pp who suggested soup if you like it. Easy to cook in bulk, if you dislike diced veg you can blend until smooth and make it as thick or thin as you like.
When you say you have noodles or pasta for lunch, are these home made dishes or pot noodle type things? If homemade there’s loads of opportunity to get some veg in there.
Same for your evening meals, for example when I make chilli it’s full of veg. If you serve with salsa and guacamole you can get even more in.
I wonder if you are seeing veg as a side dish? I think it’s a lot easier to eat more veg when it’s the main part of the meal, for example you may find it easier to eat a cottage pie with onions, carrots and celery in the meat base and topped with sweet potato mash then could would a piece of meat with potatoes and then a portion of broccoli on the side.
Also, have a look at some of the veggie products on the market, I’m not talking about quorn etc but things like bean burgers and falafel.

Also, with regard to the takeaways, the degree to which they are ‘unhealthy’ varies. Some thing like a Nando’s butterflied chicken breast with spicy rice is going to be a lot better than a Dominos deep pan double pepperoni with stuffed crust. It’s worth looking doing a bit of research on the nutritional values for different restaurants and dishes.
Obviously by making it at home will almost always be healthier but if that’s a step too far even The supermarket versions are a bit better.

Yes - supermarket ready meal curries are often far lower in fat than the takeaway equivalents and the portion sizes are not as big. They do tend to be light on veg though.

Agree with the advice to batch cook above. If you have the freezer space.

Make a massive pan of soup. Freeze into individual servings. Same with pasta sauces (make own and blend in loads of veg). Chilli (make a stash and freeze).

Batch cooking and freezing is a helpful way of dealing with the time pressure of having to prepare a healthier meal every day, but reading between the lines I don't think this is your real problem, more a convenient excuse.

Your real problem, it seems to me, is that you have decided you 'don't like vegetables' without really being able to articulate why, you know it's wrong, and are bereft of ideas on how to change that. I'd start by trying to work out why I dislike so many healthy things: is it particular tastes, particular textures, smells, or bad memories of, say, school catering? Once you are clearer you can try different methods of preparation, or different vegetables.

From what you've written, your experience of and horizons on veg and salads seem limited. There are so many resources out there on how to cook more adventurously: cookery programmes, books, or just blogs on websites. Read, lots. Research. Experiment. Pick up a new vegetable each week that you've never tried before. There will be disasters on the way (which, if you'll pardon the expression, you'll be able to dine out on in future) but eventually you'll find something you can tolerate.

Take something like a courgette. They can be eaten raw (grated or spiralised into a salad, or in ribbons with a potato peeler to use as a bed to serve a steak on), boiled or steamed, barbecued/grilled in chunks on a skewer or in slices, roasted, or sautéed with garlic onions and tomatoes. Grilled slices go well tossed with small chunks of chorizo fried in olive oil and broad beans, dressed with lemon juice, mint, and the cooking oil. Leftover roast veg (courgettes, onions, red peppers for a simple mix) go well mixed with couscous.

The texture and taste changes with each preparation, and with other ingredients: red peppers or caramelised onions work well with courgettes and impart a degree of sweetness which alters the whole dish.

Similarly, if you know that you like tomato sauces on pasta, explore which vegetables work well in tomato sauce such as beans à la grecque.

There's some great advice above, but I really don't think this is a time issue as much as it is a mindset issue. You'll need to make time if you want this to work, and you'll need to think like a cook rather than like a diner. As for things like eating a ready meal so as not to mess up the kitchen, start adulting.

Thanks for all the ideas. I like the idea of not changing my diet TOO much, but adapting it to make it more healthy... ie: change from white bread rolls to wholemeal. Add more veg into recipes etc.

Could you try recreating a Chinese or Indian dish at home? Stir fry veg and a sachet of ready made sauce is a load of veg and not much hassle. You can get loads of veg into a curry sauce. Dal is healthy. Chickpea curry is great, and you can also roast them for snacking.
I also roast a packet of ready sliced butternut squash once a week when something else is already going in the oven and pop a few slices on my plate at meals, just makes for an extra portion without hassle.