It has already been said. if you can read you can cook . Get a basic beginners cookbook and start. Find recipes that use few ingredients and go for it. I am sure you can find beginners cookbooks by googling.

I think that you are wise in your decision to learn to cook. Your reactions to the diet foods may be allergies and your reactions could get even worse. I am another person who likes the steaming bags. Here are some recipes from Glad and from Ziploc. Cooking Light has some good tutorials and videos on how to cook.

I'll be the one person who doesn't say you have to cook. Weight Watchers has the grossest, most chemical-y food in the world and I would not eat it. However, I frequently eat Healthy Choice steamers for lunch and stuff. I work full time and go to school full time and I am not invested in making my own convenience meals. Some of the Healthy Choice steamers are not the most flavorful things in the world, but they at least aren't all filled with fake crap. And some are pretty good.

A significant problem with living on even the healthier processed food, like Healthy Choice meals, is that they are high in sodium. Over-ingestion of sodium is something that is only now starting to get the attention that it needs. It is a real health concern.

In fact, even when you cook for yourself, you need to pay attention to sodium. If you buy canned beans, for example, you'll be amazed at how sodium levels can differ from one can to another. And bread, too, is high in sodium. To get sodium levels down where they ought to be, you really have to be vigilant.

The average Healthy Choice steamer meal has <600mg of sodium. That's 25% of the RDA. Unless everything else you are eating is exceptionally high in sodium, it should't be a problem for one meal to have 25% of the RDA in it. I eat one for lunch every day basically and I rarely hit 1800mg of sodium for the day with everything else I am eating.

^ Agreed. I was talking about getting most of your calories from meals like that—literally living on them, which it sounds like the OP is doing.

If you're unsure about your cooking skills, I find it easier to cook on the weekends, portion out my meals and then just reheat. I will say i cook decently well, but my worse meals come when I'm stressed and rushed. So if you take more time on the weekends, or whenever you have time to dedicate to cooking, try to make extras to reheat throughout the week.

You also don't have to cook super difficult things. Cut up veggies to make sandwiches. Buy lunch meat to chop up for salads. Pasta is easy and rice isn't much harder. You can always buy pre-cooked chicken, although its not that hard to cook it. Buy veggies you like raw or invest in a steamer. Really, basic cooking is totally doable for pretty much anyone.

I'm a "new cook" also. Well, I'm getting a lot more experience, but I've just really been cooking for the last year or so. I learned quite a few things as I started eating healthier, but even then, I'm content eating the same recipes over and over and over. I got married recently, and now I cook every night so I'm having to learn quick! I've actually made some pretty fantastic things though, and it can be fun.

My problem is I need things to be explained to me in an idiot-proof way, and a lot of recipes are written for an audience of experienced cooks. I don't know what a lot of the techniques and such are. I need them to explicitly explain every detail in the process. But if I come across something that I don't understand, I either google it (there are a lot of how-to videos on youtube) or just find an easier version of the recipe

Thank you everyone.

Just want to clarify so people don't think selenium is something to try to avoid (unless you know for certain you have an intolerance).

Selenium is an essential trace element found in many foods, including chicken, beef, turkey, and tuna but the best sources are from plant foods (brazil nuts I believe are the by far the best source).

Most Americans don't get enough selenium from their diet (probably because many are not eating enough plant foods). Any selenium that is found in a food (diet or not) is most likely there because of the foods that contain it. Frozen dinners aren't really known for being overly abundant in the foods highest in selenium, so I'd rather doubt this would be an issue.