What about nuts and nut butters? They are a good source of protein as well.

Okay, so eat meat.

Breakfast: Canadian bacon/turkey bacon
Lunch: Chicken/turkey/ham/tuna sandwich or salad
Dinner: Chicken/turkey/ham/lean ground beef/fish
Snack: Nuts or piece of cheese

Then, round out your meals with PhotoChick's suggestions of balanced meals.

Well ... ... here are my thoughts on that.

Being a picky eater is a choice. And as an adult, you can choose to eat healthily and responsibly, or you can live with the consequences - ill health, weight gain, etc.

Everyone has foods they don't like for whatever reason. Everyone. And everyone has some "unreasonable" dislikes that they're entitled to. Some just plain "I won't eat it and you can't make me" items. But when you decide that pretty much everything that is good for you is "yuck" ... to me that's something a 4 year old does.

Please understand that I don't mean that harshly or to be mean.

But when someone says, for example, "beans are yuck" ... that makes no sense. There are hundreds (literally) different varieties of beans that can be prepared thousands (literally) of different ways. To say that all of them are yuck is not reasonable, sensible, or adult.

Same with veggies.

And the more you say that you don't like something, the more you're not going to like it. If you approach new foods with an open mind, then you're much more likely to appreciate and even enjoy them.

I seriously believe that people who choose to be picky eaters will never have long term success losing weight and keeping it off.

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I've heard mixed things about nuts. I love nuts! I've heard from some people they are good for you & others that they are bad cause they're high fat/high cal... So which is correct?

I just want to say that just because someone is a picky eater, does not mean they will not have success with weight lose. There are plenty of things that I DO EAT that are healthy. Just because I don't eat nearly the same variety of food as someone isn't fair to say I mine as well just give up now cause it will never happen, since I'm a picky eater....

Some would say I'm a picky eater, I don't eat dairy, eggs or meat Although I made that decision because I felt it was healthier and was in the direction I wanted to go with my lifestyle.

I would say work with what you do like and try to expand on that. Sometimes we don't like things because we don't like them, sometimes we don't like things because we haven't given ourselves a chance to like them. I eat tons of veggies myself but not many years ago, I hardly ate any just because I didn't care for them, now I love them. But I worked with what I liked and expanded on that.

I think one of the more important things is to work on getting the calories up to a good level for your body. Then you can work on tweaking the diet a bit. That doesn't mean eating twinkies but working with foods that you currently do like that are healthy for you. So if you like nuts, eat some nuts. I recommend oatmeal (or other cereal grains) with nuts and fruit. But if you don't like that, how about nuts and fruit?

I'm not saying that you should give up - I am saying that maybe you could try to be more open minded in what you eat.

And Nelie - I do think there's a huge difference between choosing a lifestyle - vegan or veggie or macrobiotic or whatever - and just being picky and saying "yuck" automatically to an entire genre of food.

The thing here is that Extasee seems to be rejecting adding more calories because - as she admitted - she doesn't understand what's healthy and what's not. So for example, with the peanut butter, she said she's worried about adding those calories to her diet. I think for her ... understanding what *is* healthy is going to help her stop freaking out about calories so much.

For some people it might just be a matter of raising calories. For Extasee, she needs to understand that calories are not evil - that providing her body with good calories via good nutrition is important. Otherwise she's just fighting herself in forcing herself to eat calories.

If that makes sense.

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Why dont you try one new food a week? I thought I hated black beans until I looked at the nutrition info and decided it was worth another shot. I really like them now. If you look into the nutrition info of the foods you think you dont like, you might find that some are worth a second chance. Try new recipes and methods of cooking things.

Not quite. 94-105 calories per tablespoon. You're doubling it in your mind.

I think you're missing the point. Just because you eat things that are healthy doesn't mean that you are going to be a healthy person.

I'm sure everyone can agree that bananas and oatmeal are fairly healthy. If that was all you ate every single day, would you be a healthy person? No.

Your body needs different times of vitamins and minerals that come from fruits and vegetables. If you're completely cutting those out of your diet then you are not going to be healthy. Weight loss isn't about being thin, it's about nourishing your body and becoming a healthier person.

I understand what you're saying about how you feel like you'll still be successful at weight loss but the thing is.. your body needs VARIETY. It needs fruits and vegetables for everything that they give to your body. You've admitted that you don't know what's healthy and what's not, so how can you say that you'll be healthy without fruits and veggies if you don't even know?

As far as your other question, yes nuts are high in fat but there are different types of fat. Mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated (or just unsaturated) and saturated. Saturated fats are bad, poly-unsaturateds are generally okay, and mono-unsaturated are good fats. Peanuts are unsaturated fat. If you can find an all natural peanut butter with no real butter or milk products in it, you should be fine.

For the record, I never said I would be healthy without fruits & veggies. I eat fruit constantly, everyday, I love fruit. Veggies, I don't care for. If that makes me unhealthy & destined for failure, so be it.... I'm simply saying that just because someone does not eat these things all the time, does not mean they will fail. I think by saying that your setting some people up for failure. it's hard enough to stay motivated and that's why people visit this site. To say to someone that it won't work because you are a picky eater is going to discourage people & basicly set them up for failure...
:-)

Ok .. hm. How to explain this w/out getting my hand slapped for being too harsh.

The thing is, support isn't always saying what someone wants to hear. If someone comes on here and says "I refuse to eat X, Y, and Z." It's not supportive to say "well that's ok, you'll do fine anyway".

If someone comes on here and says (as an extreme example) "I want to lose weight and I'm committed to being healthy, but I refuse to give up eating a Big Mac and fries every single day for lunch" - it is not supportive of us to say "Oh that's ok. You can do it anway."

Sometimes supporting someone means saying to them: "You need to rethink your strategy."

And that's what I'm saying to you.

Fruit is great. But fruits are not veggies. There are nutritional and health benefits that you get and NEED from veggies that you cannot get with fruit. And it is not supportive of me to say "you'll be ok just eating fruit instead of veggies" because that's a lie. In fact I'll go so far as to say it would be *wrong* of me to tell you it's ok to not eat veggies.

So going back to fruits and veggies. Say you took your car to a mechanic and told him that it wouldn't start. The mechanic tells you that the reason your car is broken is because there's no oil in it. But, you say, I put gas in it every week. I really don't like oil. I don't want to put oil in it. I'm just going to put gas in it and everything will be fine.

See how it works? Your car needs gas AND oil to run. Your body needs fruit AND veggies (and protein and whole grains) to run.

For me to tell you that it's perfectly ok to not consume those items is a lie. For me to tell you that you're going to have a much harder time if you don't expand your tastes may not be what you want to hear, but it is the truth. You can choose to hear that as discouragement and make it an excuse for failure or you can choose to hear that as a motivator to make some changes and try something different with a more open mind.

And *that*, IMO, is properly supporting someone. Sometimes it means telling them things that they don't want to hear.

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This was my experience with the calorie counting with no veggies and a limited diet:

When I first started restricting my calories I ate a special K or oatmeal on the go bar for breakfast and a plain hamburger or a plain grilled chicken sandwich (meat and bread only, as I ate no condiments, lettuce, tomatoes, pretty much any vegetable at the time) for lunch every day (my office is upstairs in a restaurant, so it is convenient), then a normal dinner like I always had - most often pasta of some kind or takeout. I asked on this board "Can I lose weight consistently eating a 200 calorie oatmeal bar, a 210 calorie hamburger and then an 800 calorie dinner of pasta or chicken fingers? Its all about calories, right?"

Several people, Photo Chick included, said that I would lose weight based on the restriction of calories, but to look at the fat, the sodium, the cholesterol in that choice and to see if I was using my calories wisely. I really didn't want to hear that, because it meant I had to get off my lazy tail and make a breakfast that wasn't an oatmeal bar and learn to like and prepare other foods. Turns out I wasn't using my calories wisely - I was run down and out of sorts all the time, even when I ate 2400-3000 calories per day. A V-8 every so often just didn't cut it. I had enough different bars to stock a C-Store. (Sadly, I gave in to the sale at Target last week and bought more bars now that my calories are increased, but I'm moving past that... )

I hated vegetables more than anything, it took me ten minutes to get my meals together there were so many things I was serving my DH that I didn't eat and couldn't have touching my food, I couldn't order take out without leaving off half the items on the list. PC is right about it for me, I was jut being a baby. Today I eat tomatoes, broccoli, bell peppers, carrots, zucchini, peas, beans, all kinds of things I just didn't eat before out of principle. I had no idea how good they could be until I just ate them. I actually ate brussel sprouts over the weekend - my mom would have a heart attack.

Everything tastes so good to me now - I have a grilled chicken every day still, but it has leaf lettuce, two tomatoes & pickle on it and it isn't bland and boring anymore. I made a primavera dish with veggies and chicken and served it over fresh angel hair last week without a drop pf red sauce, just spices. And, I ate everything in it without having to pick around it.

Exstasee, I didn't think that I would learn to like there things ever, so the point of that preachy stuff I wrote was to say that you are still young and you might find that you like things more than you think with the right spices and preparation. I feel so much better today than six months ago - I have more energy, my skin looks better, I go to sleep easier and wake up smoother. I think it is the positive change in my diet, and the variety that contributed to it. My mom is 56 and doesn't eat much of anything - very selective diet. She has raging up and down blood pressure, uncontrollable IBS, more issues than I can list here. I can''t help but wonder if a better diet would have headed off some of that when she was young.

Oh, and I used to take prescription meds for my stomach issues from dairy and spicy foods, but I don't anymore. Don't know if I can attribute that to the better diet, but I figure it can't hurt.

So, again, not trying to preach, saying it all out of love, because I've been there, and am still watching loved ones there. Not trying to set you up for failure at all, just want to make sure you use all the tools available to be successful...

I agree - I am a pretty picky eater, and I have had success. I really want to enjoy more types of foods such as beans and veggies, but I also don't want to yak when I try to eat them. Being picky isn't necessarily an attitude, I truly think there are some things that my body just won't let go down my throat. Mushrooms are one of those, my throat literally locks up when a piece enters my mouth. People's taste buds really are different.

Beans I can sort of eat - if they are really well blended and 'hidden' in food. Yes, I am a 5 year old in that regard, but at least I can get some extra things in that way. I just do the best I can. With that said, there are more foods that I actually have come to enjoy as I try different ways of cooking them, or just different types. But there are a lot that I have tried and won't eat again

Since reading this, particularly Extasee's struggle with liking vegetables, I've been mulling over it all afternoon.

I don't think being a picky eater dooms you to being unhealthy, not at all. However, I do think that acquiring new tastes can be helpful in the quest for weight loss and health.

For instance, in my morbidly obese days I preferred buffalo chicken to sugar snap peas, certainly. But I can honestly say that my mindset now rules my taste buds and I would reach for the sugar snap peas over deep fried delights at any time.

When I decided to not only lose weight but also become healthier I needed to change my tastes a bit. Sure - I could have lost weight eating buffalo chicken, but I don't think I'd be any healthier for it. I know that.

I haven't been doing this for that long, there are still two taste personalities residing in my head. But with every day that I do this, the healthier me crowds the old me out.

In short, I guess what I'm attempting to say is to give the new foods a chance. Try them prepared in different ways, try all sorts of things several times before ruling them out.

At one point, for the successful losers - weight loss AND healthy decisions took over. In the very beginning of a weight loss journey I think it's common to be more concerned with the loss itself rather than total health. Eventually, they do combine, I think it's happening sooner for you than many, as you've shown willingness to up your calories and discuss your diet. It's more than just seeing the pounds melt off, it feels damned good to eat healthily! I think everyone wants you to experience that awesome feeling. I do.

And you're not saying you don't eat vegetables AT ALL right? You did say there are a few you eat? Just eat them more, try to incorporate them into your daily routine. I eat the same thing constantly, so predictable.