Real Food Makeover

?? I eat mostly foods I cook myself, so buy the "ingredients" and cook them, sometimes together and sometimes on their own. I imagine lots and lots of people eat this way, is this what you mean?

Or do you think my omelet stops being "real" food when I include 5 ingredients (eggs, feta, onion, spinach, broccoli, perhaps) rather than fewer?

I don't actually like peanut butter much (it's the texture, yeah, I'm weird), but it's actually super easy to make nut butter if you have a food processor. And you can buy it made from just peanuts and salt.

I went from eating mostly junk, all the time to eating healthy all the time. It included low salt and no fat, which eliminated just about everything in a box or can.

It was rough. The first two weeks, I was internally pissy. I wanted what others were eating. I missed my yummy foods. About six weeks into it, I cracked and had a cheeseburger and fries from my favorite deli. No burger and fries ever tasted so damn good! A little salty, but heavenly. But I felt "off" later and it sat in my stomach like a rock.

After that, it was much easier to stick with the healthy stuff because I liked how I felt. It got very boring, though. Excruciating. I was like, "I cannot eat another carrot. I don't want to see another green bean." It was also hard to get a lot of calories, because those foods are not high in calories, so you have to eat SO MUCH of it to get anywhere near 1200.

My best advice is to do this the healthy way. Make sure you aren't following some fad diet, but have received good advice for a doctor or dietician. Don't limit yourself to a certain number of ingredients. Incorporate all kinds of different flavors. Prepare those veggies in as many different ways as you can.

Focus on the healthy part of it, not the number of different foods on your plate.

I almost always make my own burgers at home, so don't consider them off plan at all. I like them as much as any I'd buy at a restaurant, so I don't usually waste restaurant meals on burgers, but that's of course a personal preference. (I do have a weakness for fries, but I indulge it rarely.)

I can usually figure out how to make anything I'd otherwise want in a way that fits into my plan, so I guess I don't have such a huge dichotomy between "junk" and healthy food. But I didn't ever buy lots of premade stuff other than restaurant food (and with the exception of ethnic places the restaurant stuff I get is similar to what I make at home, just with more ingredients and certainly more butter).