I hate my salad!

Sometimes chugging a bottle of water and waiting it out helps for me.

Can't help ya. I love my salads.

3 months into MFP, from a Rawtarian diet/lifestyle, SideSteel (Eat Train Progress Group), advised me to aim for 220 calories per meal, until I'd met my calories (including at least 50% of exercise calories). Unlike you, I was trying to eat normal food which was difficult for me to do. It made me feel gross.

Is there a reason behind the salads? Why can't you fit some of the foods you crave into your eating plan?

Crappy salad is crappy. I like to put beans and nuts on my salad, but I don't know if that will work for you. The fiber in beans and a little fat/carbs from the nuts seems to really help. You could also drink a fiber supplement a little before lunch. Something like Metamucil has almost no calories but the fiber makes you feel full and satisfied, plus it's good for your heart, and you know, digestion.

BrunetteRunner87 wrote: »

I made salads for my lunches this week on Sunday. Yesterday's was good but today it was so hard to eat, I hated it. I want spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, buttered toast, kit kat bars... I'm trying so hard to hold out till the end of the day! I know they are just cravings and I'm not hungry but it's bad today. What do you do to fight cravings? I want to go home and curl up in bed.

Are you getting enough fat in your diet? I add some avocado and almonds to salads, which helps me with cravings.

I don't restrict things I want as long as I hit my minimum macros.

What is your weight loss goal?

johunt615 wrote: »

I'd have a small portion of spaghetti with a big salad. Have a pb&j sandwich with an apple or banana.

Not cutting out food I love has made this sustainable for me to stick to and will make maintenance so much easier!

Eat what you love keep it in your calorie goal or make lower calorie versions.

This. No need to cut out any of the things you want, you just need to learn how to fit them in with your calorie goals. Pre-planning your day, following correct servings sizes (with a food scale, set to grams), and then accurately and honestly tracking your calorie intake can help you fit in all the foods you love, Kit Kat bar included

Make it into toco salad just do up your salad and add your lean ground beef chicken or turkey with seasoning mix and salsa Top with fat free sour cream or cottage cheese and a sprinkle of grated cheese

Try a Lean Cuisine spaghetti

I love salad, but not every salad. When I make a salad, I make sure it is one I will really enjoy, or why eat it? So I wonder if maybe you didn't consider taste preferences when making that salad.

Also, if you are focusing on what you can't eat and not the delicious things you are eating, I wonder if you are unnecessarily cutting out things and seeing dieting about no longer enjoying food and being restrictive. That's not a sustainable approach for most. I eat mostly foods I consider helathful (and a diet I believe is), but I eat foods I enjoy and make sure I prepare them in ways that will be delicious.

Of the things you say you are missing, why not have a spaghetti or pasta based meal? You can have it with a salad, as others noted, and just not overdo the amount of pasta or the cheese. Or, what I do (and I like this much more than a traditional spaghetti meal) is make pasta and then make a topping by sauteeing in olive oil with garlic some lean meat (shrimp is great), lots of vegetables, and maybe something extra like olives or pinenuts (or instead I'll add in a bit of feta cheese or some other strong tasting cheese) at the end to the pasta.

Peanut butter and jelly can similarly fit into a lower cal, healthful plan -- limit the amount of peanut butter and jelly you use (log them), try whole grain bread, have maybe half a sandwich and some soup with protein and lots of veg or (again) a salad. Ideas like that.

Kit kats come in small sizes, if you really love them have one as a snack at the end of dinner, perhaps -- log it and make sure you have the calories.

But to answer the question about cravings--if you are just starting, they will get better. What helped me was to stick to a set eating schedule, remember I'd be eating food I enjoyed soon, so could wait, and if there were particular tastes I really wanted (like for example, buffalo chicken), I might think of a way to include them in an upcoming meal in a lower cal way -- that often made it fun, as well as satisfying. Knowing that the food I ate could also be enjoyable and having meals that were satisfying (a mix of fat, carbs, and protein, and lots of veg for bulk and also because veg are delicious) helped with all this.

These are all the tips I know of which I think can help:
1.Make a big pot of vegetable soup, something like 5 servings (bowls) worth of soup. If you use vegetables with not so many calories in them to make the soup you can pretty much eat as much of the soup as you want all day and you'll even feel full from it. I think this is the best weight loss tip, because rather than starving yourself, you can actually fill yourself up from foods which are not calorie dense, whilst not eating too many calories in the day.
2. Freeze something like some orange juice, then you can eat it slowly, it takes a long time to eat and you feel like youve been eating for ages when youve not actually eaten that much. Feeling like youve been eating for a long time seems to satiate hunger, even if youve been eating something difficult to eat and so you didnt consume so many calories in that time. Having chewing gum can also make you feel like youve been eating for a long time when actually you havent.
3. Make sure to drink enough because often you can confuse being hungry with actually being thirsty.
4. Having vitamin pills can help or just make sure you get enough micronutrients from your diet, e.g. maybe on a diet you dont eat enough calcium and you just end up craving cheese. When really your body just wanted some calcium
5. Make sure you get enough macronutrients too, because maybe you have cravings for fatty or sugary foods from not eating enough fat or carbohydrates. When you are deficient in something your body tends to cry out for the most unhealthy version. For example if you dont eat for a whole day you will probably be craving really calorie dense foods like a pizza, cream, some cheese.. you wont be craving a salad or something like this. But you know that if you did really eat all the things you are craving you'd probably feel sick after eating not so much of it. So you can not let your bodys cravings trick you. By this I mean if your body is crying out for something really fatty, like cheese, instead of eating cheese you could have some nuts instead, if your body is craving carbohydrates like a sugary drink you could have some brown rice instead.. something like this. So even though your body is crying out for a more unhealthy food version, it will actually be satisfied when you give it the right macronutrients that it wanted.

Add salmon and goats' cheese. Filling and bloody delicious.

ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »

Maybe turn your salads into sandwiches? Have a salad or cup of soup on the side. I like to do salads with no lettuce. Cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, maybe a chopped boiled egg, avocado, chopped meat of what ever kind, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, bell peppers, olives or what ever other vegetables, meats etc.... you like with the salad dressing of your choosing. It makes a much better salad in my opinion. Much more filling and better than chewing lettuce. I understand avoiding certain foods until dinner. If I had something like lasagna for lunch I would stuff my face with it and never lose a pound.

I thought I was the only one who did this!!!! People always make fun of me because I use cucumbers as the base of my salad instead of lettuce! It is SO much better!!!

Stop eating salads and start practicing flexible dieting. I have used IIFYM.com's calculator for over 1.5 years now, and integrate it's macros and calorie settings into MFP and eat what I want, within reason as long as it fits my macros. I do eat the occasional salad, only because I want to though.