Picky Eater - New Member

I am a somewhat picky eater.

The trick is to keep trying new foods, and cooking them different ways. Every once and awhile pick up a new fruit or vegetable from the grocery store. That is how I discovered kale, beets, avocado, cabbage, fish (I know not a fruit or vegetable but I am still learning to like fish). I would buy some then try cooking it in different ways until I found a way I would like.

It took me well over a year of trying bananas before I could actually eat a whole one. For the longest time I would cut it in half and eat over 2 days or share with the boyfriend.
I find most fruit tastes better when I cut it up, so I cut up my apples, oranges, carrots. Somehow it makes it easier to eat.

I have found most summer squashes (zucchini, egg plant) have to cooked so they are still firm and not squishy to be edible.

I do not like anise, turnip, potatoes or yams/sweet potatoes or anything with cooked banana.

You have to keep trying and trying in little bits, never make a giant batch of roast beets, find one small one, roast that and just have a few bites over a few meals.

When having pasta, cut up and sauté then add to your sauce a bunch of peppers, onions, carrots, etc.

Good luck

I used to be a very picky eater for the first 20 years of my life. Right now, I'm still making the change into eating more things, both for health and so I won't make faces any time I have to eat something I dislike in front of people. All these people saying "Time to be an adult and eat real food" oversimplify the issue and don't understand exactly how hard it can be for those of us who struggle with gagging at the tastes/textures of new foods.

For me, the biggest thing I had to get past was my unwillingness to try things. My parents would stick things on my plate and tell me to try them expecting I'd like them by the time I finished what was on my plate, and they'd make a huge deal about it so everyone would be watching me if I tried something new, only to have me make hideous faces because the tastes/textures would trigger my gag reflex. Last summer, I decided to work with a family member of mine to help me eat more variety of foods.

A big thing was understanding that I would find it disgusting for the first week of trying it most of the time and not forcing myself to eat more than a few bites a day as I gave my taste buds time to get used to these weird tastes/textures. We started out with simpler things with more mild tastes or more plain textures, such as applesauce. I rarely try new things in public since my gag reflexes are triggered (although less so now), so we do it in the comfort of my house so no one has to see how difficult it is for me to eat those few bites of something new. Over time (usually about a week or so of consistently trying something), my gag reflex and disgust in foods has faded.

While I disagree with the attitude of many people who posted earlier, I am so much happier now that I eat caesar salads and know that I can go in just about any restaurant and find something to eat instead of "making things difficult" like I've always been criticized for because of my picky eating. Plus there's a world of healthier foods that I actually like now although they took me awhile to get to that point. I'm so much happier now that my picky eating doesn't dictate which restaurants I can eat at or what I'll do if a friend/coworker invites me over for dinner.

If you aren't ready to try new things yet, then I suggest you try to make smaller changes/choices in the foods you do eat. For example, back when I was a pickier eater, alfredo pasta was a main staple of my diet every few days. I discovered that sun-dried tomato alfredo still tasted good and had half the calories as regular alfredo. I also quit drenching my pasta in sauce and limited it to 2 servings of sauce (and then down to 1 serving). Another change I made was choosing healthier chicken (grilled with a light seasoning) instead of chicken fingers all the time. I don't know of your diet, but I hope any of this advice helps.

Oh, and smoothies definitely helped me get over the taste issues of fruits before trying to tackle the texture. Haven't tried the "green smoothies" yet, but I'll tackle those with time.

If any picky eaters want a MFP friend to help them work through getting past it (or even just someone who understands the struggle of picky eaters), feel free to add me.