Does anyone else really struggle to lose weight because of restricted eating?

[astorytotell]

There are a lot of foods I just don’t like, is the bottom line. And if I’m honest, most of them are vegetables.

It’s really difficult to think of healthy meals. Although I cook for my family, and these meals are healthy for children I don’t know that they are necessarily good in terms of weight loss and also they tend to be a bit samey.

Is anyone the same? I thought hello fresh was going to be my saviour but I wasn’t impressed tbh.

What kinds of meals are you already cooking?

Can you hide them and bulk with them like when you’re trying to secretly feed them to unwilling children? Veg based sauces etc or do you not like them even in disguise?
id suggest you need to go full steam on protein to fill you, eggs, do you eat salad?

I’m not a big veg, salad or fruit eater but it’s still possible to lose weight.

You just need to eat in a calorie deficit, which is entirely possible to do without much veg or fruit.

What are you go to foods?

My children eat

Roast chicken with veg (I like the chicken)
Chilli con carne
Bolognaise
Cottage pie (they like it with a LOT of cheese and butter with the mash)
Once a week, fish fingers, mash and peas
Chicken stir fry

That’s my weeks menu (roast is Wednesday and Sunday.)

I know @TokenGinger (that’s said in a ‘yeah I agree, totally’ sort of way, not ‘I know!’ like Kevin the teenager) it’s just I want to be a bit healthier as well.

I have manly lost weight on those meal replacement plans but then because my eating is poor it ends up going back on.

Can you look at it the other way round?

Make a list of all the foods you do like, that happen to be healthy and not UPF. Split them into protein, fruit & veg, complex carbs, healthy fats categories. Then add any healthy foods you can tolerate, or are fine in certain forms (e.g. loads of people hate raw tomato but it's okay in a sauce.)

Then build your recipes around them. You don't have to be massively varied in your diet. It's better if you can be, but not the end of the world if you are not.

DS2 has autism and was extremely limited in foods he'd eat - severe ARFID. I would puree a mix of veg: onion or leek, carrot, celery as a base, then add mushrooms, courgettes, sweet peppers, butternut squash or similar. Cook until soft, puree until smooth, and then just add a ladleful to minced meat when making burgers or pasta sauces or chicken casserole or curry. You could do this and freeze it in big ice cubes, then just add a few cubes when you can conceal the food in something else.

I don’t like salad really …

Food I will eat fruit / veg wise:

veg

Corn on the cob - probably the only veg I actually like
Carrots - I don’t like them but I ca tolerate them. not raw though.
onions
sweet potatoes
avocado

fruit

Strawberries
bananas
apples
mango

I’ll eat things like melon in a prepackaged thing but not on its own… weird I know

salad

no - will tolerate a bit of lettuce but cucumber, tomato, anything like that is out.

So not brilliant really.

Another very weird thing is I won’t eat things that have been frozen and heated up - I know I’m really awkward, I just hate it!

I have the opposite problem. The only time I lose weight is if I am ill and eat virtually nothing or if I do the low carb diet. I love most vegetables and fruit but I don't like chicken and don't really eat much meat so it's hard to get enough protein. I also find eating a lot of eggs sets off my eczema as well.

ETA - crosspost!

I think regardless of weight loss it would be a good idea to learn to eat veg. For your bowel health, skin, how long you will live...
Do you actually have a revulsion to veg, or is it just that you don't much like the texture/flavour? If the former, disguise them as pp suggested. If the latter, perhaps you could say what you don't like about them so we can suggest different ways to cook different veg?

Eg can you manage raw peppers but hate roast peppers? What about sun blush tomatoes? Corn on the cob? Roast parsnips? Fresh lightly steamed sugar snap peas? These are all so utterly different in taste and texture that it seems odd to write them all off.

There are possibly some I could tolerate but some I have a really, really strong aversion to, like peas.

Do you cook them really well? I love veg, especially broccoli, but if it's even a tiny bit overcooked it's grim.

You can manage cooked carrots? What about roast carrots with honey and sesame seeds?

Do you like blended soups with veg in? Minestrone? Tomato base but also has meat/beans/pasta.

I do but I am very bad at making soup. Everyone complained when I tried last autumn which put me off!

Roast carrots with honey sounds nice. I have this book https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/434767/the-roasting-tin-by-rukmini-iyer/9781910931516 might have to look through it again; my children didn’t seem to like it but I did!

Thinking about it a bit more I do think some of the problem is that I’m mostly cooking for one as my children eat different meals and DH is often away. And that is really hard - I think it’s why my diet wasn’t very healthy previously because I was single for a long time before I met DH, but I was younger and more active.

I'm the same but adjust my meals to be a bit healthier ie use frylite . I steam some cauliflower rice for me instead of the reg rice for the rest of the family. I weight my pasta portions and use whole grain and for the roast I then to just fill my plate with veggies and leave off the mashed potato . Works quite well for me . I've lost 8 pounds in the last 4 weeks.
weighing scales is your friend though as is tracking everything .

Oh my goodness I LOVE the roasting tin books - have you got them all? So many delicious and easy ways to eat veg.

Being able to make good soup is definitely something you could learn. It's so healthy, delicious, and great for weight loss. Is there anyone you know who's good who could teach you? Or poss a course? Failing that, start another thread on here asking people for their amazing soup recipes with exact quantities written out. Once you get good at a few soups you'll be more confident in the basics of soup making and could then go off piste!

I think I need to buy a soup maker. I don’t trust my cooking. I think this is the thing: because I don’t really like veg I don’t cook it for me so I probably don’t cook it well, my little DD in particular seems a big fan of my overcooked broccoli 😂

I’ve only got the one roasting tin book; I really do need to find some recipes.

You seem quite fixated on not being able to eat many vegetables so not able to lose weight. It’s about calories in v out and entirely possible to lose weight without ever eating a vegetable. Obviously for a balanced diet it’s better to eat them, but it won’t stop you losing weight. Have you worked out how many calories you need and how many you should eat to be in a defect? That’s the first step, then look at what you can eat and meal plan from there.

A soup maker won't make your soup tasty though, it just saves you work at the blending stage.
Good soup is made by layering (eg caramelising the onions before adding the leeks and gently sauteing them with garlic, then adding the potato, then the stock, and so on) and also obviously the quantities/ratio of each ingredient you put in.
The good news is that with the exception of a few niche soups they are all made pretty much the same so it really is worth nailing a couple of recipes because you should easily be able to adapt your skills to new flavours.

I know @theflat but in the long term it’s hard to not eat a balanced, sensible diet and keep the weight off is what I’m saying I suppose.

Restricted eating isn’t the barrier to weight loss, restricted calories is. So you can have a relatively small variety of foods you will eat but unless you know how many calories you are putting in v out, weight loss won’t happen. It’s not about deprivation or crash dieting but what you weigh and the number of calories you can eat will be your answer. Rotating a couple of veggies is fine.

Does make cooking healthy meals hard, though. Hello fresh for instance came with a lot of stuff I just won’t eat. Recipes likewise.

Have you tried roasting vegetables instead of eating boiled ones? Their flavour and texture are so much nicer and even some haters I know have enthusiastically eaten roasted cauliflower and broccoli.

Have you ever considered getting some therapy to help with your food aversions?

Roasting is so much nicer. I did actually have a healthy (by my standards) day yesterday. Evening meal was roast chicken, butternut squash and red onion. Yum. And veg - wow!

No to therapy … it isn’t an aversion, I’m just picky and I have got worse and worse as for ages I was single so only had to feed myself. Then I met a similarly picky husband! But our dislikes are different so I have to cook separately for me and he sorts himself.