I hate my salad!

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.

I'm not wild about salads. Every now and again, I really want one, but, for the most part, I avoid them and have stopped trying to force myself to make and eat them at home. If it's trying to get more veggies in you, I do a lot better with a nice bowl of cooked veggies with some brown rice or quinoa, maybe with some beans and some form of potato (half a baked sweet potato! Yum). I lovingly refer to these as garbage bowls, and find them very filling and delicious. They're also way more appetizing for me this time of year when I'm constantly cold (I'm half reptile, I think). The last thing I want is a cold salad! I often will toss in some fresh baby spinach. I find the hot food "cooks" the spinach just the right amount, and it's extra filling.

I'm vegetarian, hence no meat, but you could probably easily toss in some chicken or whatever lean meat you wanted to Round it out.

If you're thinking about eating other things because you hate salads, why are you punishing yourself? You're setting yourself upI'm having a collection of celery and carrot sticks, pickled okra, and kalamata olives to be followed by a peanut butter sandwich with no sugar added orange marmalade on low-cal bread for lunch.

If you crave mac and cheese, look for "low calorie mac and cheese" in your search engine. Make up a pan and take a serving to work for lunch along with some veggies that you like. If on the other hand you're craving a "binge" with large amounts of mac and cheese, that has more to do with psychology than metabolism. See:

http://www.beckdietsolution.com

You ask what I do to fight cravings?

• Wander around office and leave ransom notes for things I take from desks if no one is there
• Make copies of my... um ... hand
• Listen to Cold Water featuring Justin Bieber on repeat until I'm numb
• Write my heaviest weight on the inside of my wrist and stare at it until I remember how that felt
• Tear and fold gum wrappers into long paper chains
• Play hide and seek with my boss ... without telling him we are playing

The list is endless really because I fight cravings by distracting myself with anything else to keep from focusing on food. I don't ALWAYS distract myself productively, but the key for me is to disrupt the quiet, boring existence that lulls me into unconscious feeding.

I'm not perfect. Sometimes my obsession with food/eating feels out of control, but changing my focus gives me better control over food. I hear your desire to be in control too. #Struggleisreal

You got this. Don't overthink it. Burn more calories than you take in. You are the top of the food chain, so no Kit Kat bar can control you! RAWRRRRRRR!

BrunetteRunner87 wrote: »

I eat foods that I like, but I find myself craving carbs all day and bingeing on macaroni and cheese from market district or the pastas at the italian food store, which I should not do every day and I am making an effort to eat more vegetables and clean foods. The salad was a good salad, it was from Run Fast Eat Slow and had peppers, kale, onion, quinoa, cheese, pumpkin seeds, black beans and avocado. It tasted good, but I craved a binge on food with empty calories.

The salad sounds delicious to me, but if you weren't in the mood for it maybe it didn't hit the spot.

This is a pet peeve of mine, but mac and cheese isn't really "a carb" (and fruits and vegetables, of course, could be called "carbs"). I never get why people use "carbs" as if it meant "junk food" or "high cal treat." The reason stereotypical mac and cheese wouldn't be great for a diet (although if you control serving size it's fine) is that it's high in calories due to the fat (at least if real mac and cheese, beats me about the boxed stuff) and tends not to have vegetables. You can make a much more diet-and-nutrition-friendly version by using less cheese or cream and adding in lots of vegetables and maybe some lean protein. Or if it's just pasta in general you crave, why not make a lower cal, lots of veg and some lean protein pasta dish like the one I mentioned above. Restaurant ones are usually going to have fewer veg and higher cals due to added fat (cheese or oil or cream), as well as larger than necessary servings, often.

Point is that you can combine goals like lower calories, more vegetables, satiating with a desire for something like pasta. (And I don't see why pasta wouldn't be "clean," but then I don't find that a helpful word to use to describe food.)

The higher fiber pasta that Needs2 mentioned might be worth checking out too. I always mean to but keep forgetting, but I often do use whole grain pasta at home. I find eating lots of other foods with the pasta (which is how I like it best anyway) more significant, though. Even if you really want a simple mac and cheese, combining it with a salad as others have mentioned would work.

I'm still in salad mode, weirdly, but usually don't eat them during the winter. I eat lots of vegetables still, in other forms, again as others have suggested.

I rarely eat salads... I have to really want it to be able to eat it, lol.