Idk how to cook or eat healthy

I tend to do easy cooking. My favorite way to have veggies (zuchinni, squash, green beans, carrots, fennel, broccoli, and califlower) is roasting them. Toss with a little oil and your favorite seasoning and put in the oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. Carrots would go a little longer. I've been adding two tablespoons of Balsamic Vinegar to the mix and it's great for switching things up!

Another easy thing I do is buy frozen salmon filets from Costco. Defrost, add Fox Point seasoning from Penzeys along with some lemon juice then bake. Also, seasonings are your friend, try some blends out! Also from Penzeys that I love is Mural of Flavor. It is great on roasted asparagus! I picked up a seasoning mix with garlic and Himalayan salt at a discount store. TJ Maxx had some good spices when I was there yesterday.

Like others have said, start with the easy stuff. Eggs, etc. You can also eat a lot of raw veggies you like, with dressings/cheese (no cooking required).

Take a look around your local town. Often there are free or low cost cooking classes you can participate in. Ones in my town tend to be hosted by cookware stores.

Think of one thing you'd like to learn how to do, like bake chicken. Then plug into the search bar in google or you tube "how to bake chicken". Don't think it's a stupid question and you won't find anything! I've googled stuff I was embarrassed I didn't know how to do and have been surprised to find very basic video tutorials and step by step guides. You can also try picking up a cookbook for kids. And understand, for MANY of us, learning how to cook was a humbling journey of trial and error. I've eaten a lot of tasteless or slightly burnt crap because I tried and failed and didn't want to waste it

As far as eating healthy, there are lots of different opinions on that! For me, making my diet healthier involved getting more protein, more fiber from whole grains and beans, and more veggies and fruits. But others will define it differently.

Start slow, don't try to change everything overnight. Add one healthy food to your diet, get used to it, do another.

Another option is to try out a meal-kit delivery service. They give you all of the pre-measured ingredients and detailed instructions to create the meal yourself. You don't have to worry about the grocery shopping or have leftover ingredients you may never need again.

I'm not a big fan of chicken, either, but I do like broccoli.

What foods do you like best? What's your favorite meal? What do you like to order in restaurants?

Write down some of your favorite types of food and then look online for healthier ways to prepare them.

When you say you can't cook, does that mean you can't boil water and make pasta, or does it mean you don't routinely put a full dinner on the table every night. If it's the former, as someone else mentioned, a children's cookbook might be a good starting place. And I love to watch cooking shows on t.v. Ina Garten is my favorite.

Go to the library and browse through some cook books. Check out any that sound interesting to you.

I tend to just experiment when I'm cooking. When I use recipes they're usually from my mother or from the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook or from favorite websites. Does your mother or grandmother cook? Ask for some family favorite recipes with step-by-step instructions.

I think I've roasted a chicken once in my life and all I learned from that is that I don't like roasted chicken although I do like grocery store rotisserie chicken and a whole chicken cooked in the crockpot.

As others mentioned, The Joy of Cooking is a good book with lots of basic instructions for just about everything (and a lot of difficult, complicated recipes, too).

Start slow. Think of a meal you like. Google how to make that. I was raised by a non-cooker so when I became an adult I had no idea how to feed myself other than sandwiches and frozen chicken nuggets and things like that. I just picked meals I liked and googled how to make them. Lots of things turned out like *kitten*, and they still do, but less frequently. You can also eat simple things like sandwiches, rotisserie chicken with a baked potato and some vegetable.

Cooking tip from one former non-cook to another: Season, season, season. Growing up I hated veggies because my parents thought seasoning meant table salt and a little black pepper and that's it. You'd be surprised the difference paprika and garlic can do, for starters.

I think when my wife and I first started cooking for ourselves and meal prepping, we thought we had to be gourmet chefs and everything had to be a skinny taste recipe with a dozen ingredients and take hours of slow cooking to be a home cooked meal. Now we keep it a lot simpler by cooking a handful of things that don't take much time or ingredients. Here are a few:

Grilled chicken: My wife makes this. We buy thin sliced (in tenders style) chicken and grill it on a stove top grill in bulk. Usually about 3 pounds at a time and we keep it in the refridgerator for several meals. All she does is add some spices. When we reheat it, sometimes I will add hot sauce or cheese to spice it up.

Eggs - I like to hard boil them. my wife will scramble them, fry them, or make an omelet with cheese and vegetables.

Salmon - I cook this in the oven. I just add some lemon juice and spices.

Tacos - We are big tacos fan. I will pan cook ground beef in salsa, and then we will get either hard or soft taco shells. We will have a combination of stuff with it. Usually some combination of avocado, pre-made pico de gallo, sour cream, colby jack cheese, refried beans (canned). Other times we will have it as a salad with cheese, beans, lettuce, avocado and tomato.

Burrata - One of our favorites. We get a special cheese called burrata, which is a stuffed mozzarella cheese. But if that is not available, it will work with fresh mozzarella. It is served with sliced tomato, sliced avocado, and fresh basil. I will also cook shrimp to have with this, usually pre-cooked shrimp that I thaw by running water over it in the sink and then I pan cook with siracha sauce.

None of those are very complicated. They can be done without needing to mix sauces or cook multiple things separately or do any sort of complex cooking. But they are tasty, and we enjoy them while using them as part of our diet.

Hey @mmeek1995 ! I would highly recommend first getting yourself some of the following seasoning: Garam Masala (goes with everything - indian spice mix but is NOT spicy), chilli powder if you like spice, smoked paprika, sea salt, coriander (if you like it), turmeric (I add a tiny bit to everything as it's amazingly beneficial). I pretty much add most of these to all my cooking. Healthy food does not need to be bland, and a lot of people give up because they cook healthy and do not season therefore do not enjoy what they eat. If you cook chicken or fish simply buy fillets or breasts and follow the instructions on the packet, ensuring once finished that the chicken is cooked through. Season BEFORE you put these in the oven as it makes all the difference in the world. If you are completely new to cooking then get yourself some microwave brown rice, as cooking it may be a bit much at first, and you want to get used to eating healthy first. Add your veg, so broccoli, asparagus, peppers, whatever you fancy. Boiled brocolli isn't too appealing so I usually roast my veg, mix it all up, season and drizzle some olive oil over, put in the oven for around 20 minutes or until the veg looks cooked. DO NOT be afraid of oil, too many people count calories over nutrition and olive oil/avocado oil has so many benefits.

Basically for a complete newby I recommend this:

Breakfast ideas:

- 3 eggs (scrambled/omelette with veg)
- mashed avocado on rye bread/brown bread (add salt and black pepper to avocado when mashing - chilli flakes are a nice touch)
- overnight oats (just google this for loads of ideas)
- Normal porridge with toppings such as: honey/ piece of dark choc/ maple syrup/ nuts/ banana / nut butter

Lunch/ dinner ideas:

- Chicken or fish, brown rice, veg
- If vegetarian iceland do a fantastic meat free range, so one of their options with brown rice and veg
- stir fry (a load of veg in a wok - add soy sauce, garlic and other seasoning - add meat if wanted)
- naked chicken / veggie burger - ( i use iceland vegan no beef burger / vegan pulled pork burger) add everything you would with normal burger without the bun, ad sweet potato wedges (home made)
- large stuffed sweet potato (can get recipes online)
- egg white pizza (base eggs white, baking soda, coconut flour), top like regular pizza

Snack ideas:
-Hand full of nuts (I train a lot and always salt and roast these as you need more salt if you train more - chuck normal nuts in oven cover with drizzle of oil and salt and roast for around 15 minutes, put into a jar to graze as you like)
- Apple with peanut butter
- Celery with peanut butter
- carrots and hummus
- Dark chocolate
- I like the proper corn sweet and salted


I am not an expert, but I love meal prepping and eating well when I can so just trying to help. The key thing is to not completely restrict yourself, slow and steady wins the race, small changes. And you CAN treat yourself if you want, it's not all or nothing. If you want that ice cream on the weekend, or a burger because you have been good HAVE IT.