I've come to a conclusion...

I used to feel this same way. Eating, cooking, cleaning up afterwards, what a total waste of time. Let's not even talk about having to decide what to eat in the first place. Most of the time I didn't eat. Helps explain why I weighed 89 pounds at 5'2". (well.... some of the reasons, anyway...) Hypoglycemia was a daily occurrence. I lived on cheese and whole wheat bread.

Right now I am 122 pounds and 35% body fat. The downside of weighing 89 pounds for a decade and then gaining lots of weight without exercising at all and having a lot of stress. But I digress.

I eat mostly the same every day. I know what it takes to hit my macros and there are few changes. This makes it easy to purchase and prep food in advance. If a change is made, it will be something that I am eating for the week. Last week I made rice, so all week dinner was salmon with broccoli and 1/2 cup of rice. Next week rice will exchange for baked sweet potatoes, broccoli will be changed out for frozen peas. Turkey instead of salmon.

Over the summer my protein shake has been made with bananas and strawberries. It is now peach season, so this last two weeks I have been making it with peaches. Peaches will be gone in three days and I will go to something else.

Simplicity. Hope this helps.

I hate food. Well, ok. It's not food I hate. It's eating. There's so much more I could be doing when I have to take the time to eat.

Look into intermittent fasting where you eat all of your calories in a smaller period of time.

Also, every time I do eat, I can't help but think it's making me fatter than I already am, even though I know that too few calories is just as detrimental as too many. Anybody else experienced this?

This is a mental block that you must get past to be healthy. Check out http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12. This gives a great explanation on why eating enough is healthy and necessary. "Great bodies are built in the kitchen and while we sleep! Everything else is secondary."

My whole identity is in my food. I pride myself in making wonderful soups and stews and other things. The very process of chopping (yes, I do it by hand, not a food processer) is cathartic, calming. I generally make fairly low calorie meals ... except I'm absolutely hooked on beef at least once a week. Now, I'm looking at the real calories of it all... and realizing that even in my "small snacks" I was mowing down great numbers of calories.

I love to eat good tasty, interesting foods. I just need to look at them differently now. WW didn't work. There was too much fudge room. This is calories in, calories out. For those who eat all their food at once ... your body isn't getting fuel to work all day. Kinda like running an engine on empty. I'm a diabetic and I couldn't do that if I wanted to.

I just want MFP to give me the visuals and occasional emotional "atta-babies" that I need. I know I'm still going to cook, and I'm still gong to eat ... but I'll be darned if I'm going to continue to balloon upwards into "fat old lady" status. I want to get back to (approximately) where I was in my 30s. A healthy, maintainable weight. These posts are great. Keep 'em coming.