Originally Posted by bargoo:
I want to go to mandalinns for dinner !

Me too. I think I am going to borrow some of her dinner ideas. :carrot:

Girl what ARE you talking about? Healthy food is DELICIOUS!

Tonight I'm having peppers, onions, zucchini, and chicken cooked with a spray of olive oil and grilling seasonings (like Ms. Dash). I put that in a foil and seal it up- toss it on the grill for 15 minutes and it's HEAVEN! Want some spicy toss on some hot sauce!

Tomorrow I'm making "korean BBQ" bowls, shredded zucchini, shredded carrots, onions, spinach, grilled chicken, sauteed and cooked with some sriracha and then toss a fried egg on top and BAM! I'm drooling just thinking of it now! :)

You have to expand your recipes :)

Wow, Mandalinn....I'll be stealing some of those meal ideas for sure!

Healthy food doesn't have to be bland, boring or salad! There are tons of great recipes on here for all tastes and ability levels. Check out some healthy recipe sites like Green Lite Bites, Skinny Taste, Cooking Light and more. Go to your local library and start borrowing healthy cooking books. Try at least one new recipe every week. And start building up your herb/spice collection! Roast some veggies with a bit of olive oil, rosemary and thyme and see if you still think healthy food has no taste!

If you want a burger, go for a Bison burger. It's something that i recently discovered. It is SUPER SUPER lean and it sits so lightly in the tummy. You should try it!

I hate salads. HATE THEM. I have probably eaten 3 salads since I started this journey 2 years ago.

You have to find healthy foods that you enjoy. Go to the grocery store, poke around the outer rims and try new things. Look up recipes online.

Another thing you could do is try to re-invent your favorite "non-healthy" foods. If you like cheeseburgers, try making turkey burgers with spices in them. Look up a recipe for baked sweet potato fries.

The Hungry Girl website has a lot of food swaps that could be useful.

Don't give up! :)

Bison's a good option for burgers, yep!

Or you could just use beef, but choose leaner beef, cook a smaller patty, and eat it open-faced (just taking off half the bun saves on calories without diminishing the taste of the burger).

Eating healthy doesn't mean cutting out burgers. It means finding ways to make burgers work for you, not against you. Whether you do that by using leaner ingredients, eating a smaller portion, or some combination of both is up to you.

I used to think of meals like the solar system--there was a massive portion of the stuff I liked most in the center surrounded by a few tiny satellite side dishes. Learning proportion helped immensely; now I eat a modest (but delicious) burger with three or four vegetable-rich sides instead of a massive burger on a plate containing nothing green but the pickle.

I must be doing this "dieting" thing wrong. Cause I had a hamburger AND Olive Garden last week and still lost 1.8 lbs.
For me, its about planning, looking up calorie counts and fitting it into my day. I went to Olive Garden on a date with my SO. We had it planned. I looked up the points (or calories if you will) for options that I liked. From there, I planned my day backwards so that meal took the bulk of my calories. Granted, I didn't get to order absolutely anything on the menu and I avoided the bread-sticks like the plague. But I was still happy at the end of the day.

Having a burger was the result of just having a naturally low-calorie day. My breakfast was smaller than expected, because we ran out of Peanut butter. My lunch was mostly veggies because they were just about to go bad. So I had a lot of calories left at the end of the day and a burger sounded good. It fit, I was happy and the day moved on.

But both meals were possible because I planned for them. I was careful with my ordering and I made it fit into the low calorie plan. It doesn't have to be all salads or all eating out...its about planning and making smart choices.

I HARDLY ever eat salads and there is so much to choose from and I enjoy all my meals like the others have said you have many choices. For starters MEAT MEAT MEAT!! I back and boil never fry my meats and there are sooooo many things you can do with chicken. I also eat sandwiches a lot cold cuts with a slice of cheese because I hardly cook. Yogurt, nuts, the list goes on and on.

Good luck you can do it!

Originally Posted by j0lamo01:
I want to go off od my diet today because it would be enjoyable to have a cheeseburger and fries or go to olive garden. I am bored of only eating salads and foods with little or no taste. I haven't lost any weight yet and I have been eating healthy for 2 weeks. I am very frustrated.

Ok, but why do you eat only salads and food with little taste? I always enjoy my food - it may not be everybody's taste but I think it's quite tasty. Give me some examples of what you cook and with what ingredients. I am sure we can find a way of how to improve the taste.

Originally Posted by stellarosa27:
I hate salads. HATE THEM. I have probably eaten 3 salads since I started this journey 2 years ago.

You have to find healthy foods that you enjoy. Go to the grocery store, poke around the outer rims and try new things. Look up recipes online.

Another thing you could do is try to re-invent your favorite "non-healthy" foods. If you like cheeseburgers, try making turkey burgers with spices in them. Look up a recipe for baked sweet potato fries.

The Hungry Girl website has a lot of food swaps that could be useful.

Don't give up! :)

DITTO you sound so much like myself! I hardly ever eat salads

Dutch Oven!!! My best friend. I can not eat any gluten; limits a whole food group and my choices. Therefore I have become creative with soups and stews. They are easier to make than you think.

I usually have a large variety in my freezer; I don't get bored :)

If you think eating healthy is boring, you may not be eating healthy. Healthy really is about variety. And thre's an endless variety of healthy foods that can fit into a reduced calorie diet.

If you go to the grocery store with the adventuring spirit of an explorer, you'll find thousands and thousands of interesting foods you've never tried before. If you also go into gourmet, import, and ethnic markets you can find even more.

I could write more than one book on the healthy foods I've tried for the first time just during this weight loss attempt (if I counted all the ones I've tried in the last 45 years, I might be able to write a small encyclopedia set).

This morning I made a blood orange slushie with Diet Rite Splenda sweetened sparkling lemonade, ice cubes, and a peeled blood orange (an orange that looks like a normal orange on the outside, but has has red or purple red flesh and tastes like a sweet conventional orange, but with a hint of raspberry-like flavor Yummy).

Trying new foods, especially fruits and vegetables is my new food passion. I've tried grains and starchy veggies too, but those do require some cooking skills. Most fruits are best eaten raw, and the veggies usually don't need any more complicated preparation than rinsing and possibly peeling and/or microwaving.

Now eating a burger does sound boring. I still crave them during TOM, but I know what a burger tastes like. Trying something I've never eaten before, now that's interesting.

I've had some unpleasant experiences, but I'd rather taste something horrible than taste something I've had a thousand times. More often than not, I was pleasantly surprised, even at some of the weirdest sounding stuff.

For example, one of my weirdest loves is squid jerky (I call it that. It's actually called prepared squid in oriental groceries where I find it). It's kind of pretty - it looks like shreds of dried chicken only it's pink. It's not uber-healthy because of the salt and sometimes sugar added to the marinade, but it's low-calorie, low-fat, and usually very low-carb (even if sugar is a listed ingredient).

It smells kind of fishy (hubby hates it, so the cat and I enjoy it when he's out), but it tastes only a little fishy and very sweet. It's really good in a salad as a flavor puncher too (I let it marinade in the salad dressing for a few minutes before mixing the salad to soften the squid jerky). It's also super good mixed into low-fat cream cheese as a cheesespread for veggies.

Eggplant - always thought I hated it. Found out I only hated the big ones. Slim, long or small,oval oriental ones I love, especially roasted.

Actually almost every veggie I've roasted has been amazing. I shake the sliced veggies in a ziploc bag with just a bit of oil and seasonings (my favorite is dry ranch dressing mix powder) and then roast around 400 degrees (starchy or denser veggies can roast higher and longer, but if I've never roasted a veggie before I always start at 400 and 20 minutes). I like to roast them until the edges are getting black and the veggies are very tender. Except snap peas, thouse I like wiht some crunch still left to them.

I could go on and on for hours. And I have if I counted all my food posts here and on my 3FC Blog. The Shoestring forum is really good for recipes (and as a bonus, they're cheap).

I agree with everyone else. My food is delicious, fairly varied, and full of flavor! And hamburgers is something we have for dinner every couple weeks -- I fire up the grill in the middle of winter. LOVE my food!

I hate salads and most of the people in this thread seem to also. The only ones I actually like are taco salads.

Cooking healthy can be easy and delicious! Just now for lunch, I stir-fried a chicken breast with a frozen veggie mix of zucchini, squash, and broccoli, added a couple of teaspoons of a commercial stir-fry mix and a few drizzles of soy sauce. After that I covered it and let it simmer until the veggies were done and the sauce was thick. It was easy and delicious.

If you like pizza, you could make your own crusts with whole-wheat flour and top it with light cheese, turkey pepperoni, olives, onions, or other veggies. If you like burgers, you could choose turkey or lean beef, season+mix your own patties and eat it wrapped in lettuce or like another poster suggested, open-faced.

Please don't get discouraged because you're not losing weight. You just need to stick with it and the pounds will come off! Try to track your calories more closely because you may be eating more than you think you are.

I like Pizza I wonder if there are any healthy pizza recipes