Need to sort out frame of mind over eating as I am fat(sorry long thread)

Your cooking tastes bland because you're used to eating ready meals with loads of crap flavour enhancers so you can't taste normal stuff properly. No way to get over that other then buy a box of msg and add that to your cooking, put tonnes of chilli sauce on your food or put up with it being bland until your sense of taste comes back. I'd recommend you find some good recipes and stop buying junk.

I got ready meals growing up(though id say 9/10 of the food my parents gave me was home made) and when I left home had processed foods for years, it was only once I was depressed that I lost my sense of taste/satisfaction.

I know the tastes are there but my brain doesnt react to them in same way.

Only other theory is 3 years ago I had a tooth removed and the tooth was touching the nerve on my nose and I was told I would get problems when I was older,and since then my sense of smell has almost vanished, I can still smell things but the smell no longer lingers.

I will also note I dont even enjoy take aways much anymore, before if I ate a take away even if it was my only food in the day I wouldnt eat anything else for rest of day as the rich taste would fill me up.

Now eating food feels no different than drinking a pint of water with some flavouring in it.

Anyway currently my diet is kinda crazy, today I ate a 2 cheap chicken burgers with a slice of cheese on them in 2 slices of bread, a portion of pasta, and a liquorice bar and about 4 chocolate biscuits, a ready meal and then had 2 creme eggs and 2 packs of love hearts(this isnt at same time this is over a few hours) and on Monday had 2 creme eggs, 2 love hearts, and a veggie spaghetti bolognaise with some prawns mixed in, a ready meal and a bar of liqourice.

here's the math..

If you eat more than the energy you use each day - You will get fat.

therefore,

Eat less & burn more energy - and you will start losing weight.

now work out how much energy you use each day and then build your diet around it.

it aint rocket science luv

okay, I have a question....

Considering all food tastes bland to you, then WHY do you eat tons of junk food? The only reason I would eat, say, a chocolate bar for example, would be for the taste of the chocolate.
If the chocolate tastes BLAND to you, then why eat it at all?
You might as well just eat lettuce! It would be healthier by far, and presumably it would just taste as bland as a chocolate bar!

You've kind of created your own problem. You say your parent's cooking is more appetising than your own but as far as I can tell from your OP you don't actually cook anything. Perhaps you should learn to cook and sort out your eating habits i.e. not buying junk and skipping meals. You seem to be able to eat when you're hungry enough.

Now eating food feels no different than drinking a pint of water with some flavouring in it.

I think you just need to exercise some will power. Instead of thinking 'this is going to taste awful/bland' or whatever, get yourself a decent cookbook, try some new things and stop fretting so much about your own cooking.

If you're cooking meals then chucking half of it away, make things you can freeze instead. For a start, you'll always have food in the freezer you can defrost and you won't need to eat ready meals, and secondly it wont be full of the crap that's in ready made stuff.

Perhaps your food tastes bland because you aren't seasoning it well? Have you tried experimenting with different spices and herbs in your cooking? I know how it feels sometimes, when you've spent ages cooking something you just don't feel like eating it once it's done; I do it all the time. Hence I try to make things I can keep in the fridge or freezer so I can eat it when I do feel like it.

I'm not sure what else to say, really, I think a lot of it is in your head and you just need to prove to yourself that you don't need all the junk in your diet. You obviously want to change it, or you wouldn't have posted here, so good luck with it

I suppose I am not that clear but food can be rich and bland at same time, eating bread is bland so if I am starving then even if I ate half a loaf I would crave something else even if I was so full I couldnt eat anything more.

I went through a phase of going to the take away most days and buying pitta bread salads since I love pitta bread and salad but if I try and make my own it tastes bland, wheras the take away one tastes ok or niceish but more something to fill me up so later in the day I would need more food.

Well ANYONES cooking tastes better to me, if someone who just left home and never cooked before in life made me a meal it would taste far better than my own even if burnt, the only difference is that the better the cook the more appetised I am,

I do make my own cooking a bit but end up throwing it away as it doesnt seem appealing, but the appeal only really goes away at dishing up time I can make home made soups for example or be a bit lazier and use a tin of soup as base and add own veg and chicken and it will taste nice but not be appetising so I feel like food afterwards.

Had a friend cooked it for me I would feel full.

There must be an element of something psychological there as it used to be that I could literally starve yet I would never eat out of the house even going to say McDonalds with friends I would struggle to eat more than a plain cheeseburger.

It could also be the aspect of limits, if say I cook a lot of food I will eat next to nothing and chuck the rest, if I cook next to nothing I will be hungry when finished so cook more but be full but just eating though I feel full and hungry at same time.

How can you work out how much energy you use?

Well surely the solution is that you don't like bread??? Maybe try a different kind...spelt/rye etc.



This kind of sounds like you've got too used to eating junk.



Yes but you said that if you've not eaten in a while you find it easier to eat food that you'd have otherwise hesitated over. Honestly I think you have given yourself food issues from all the junk/skipping meal. If you cut out all junk and try to eat something reasonably healthy at every mealtime I'm sure it would be beneficial. Even if you don't eat at lunch, for example, you'll be hungrier at dinner so more likely to eat. You've got into a habit and need to get out of it.

Alternatively if this approach doesn't work I think you need to see a mental health professional. Perhaps you have deeper rooted issues with food. Are you sure it's not to do with hygiene/social anxiety? (I'm thinking McDonalds here)

Well even when I was living at home I had the same sort of habits so I dont think its strictly junk related but I dont know, since I left home at 16 and I had a kiddy diet of having like a refreshers bar and 20p mix up in evening with a frozen pizza and maybe the odd wagon wheel and I was underweight.

When I was 21 I was at a stable weight and had some edgeway of a stone or so each direction and still lived off stuff like pasta and bread with the odd chinese curry(and no rice)

I did gain 3 stone after a family member died and I lived off take aways for like 6 months but literally as soon as I stopped eating them I dropped the 3 stone in about 6 weeks and kept it off for a year and that was when it started creeping up and has crept up more and more ever since

It just seems to be when I hit 23 I found it hard to lose weight.

I am better than I was though, when I was in my first year of uni I ate take aways a few times a week so can understand the weight gain then and also got terrible heart cramps but as soon as I went back to "cooking" as in putting something in oven my weight went down half a stone and stuck for a while but has gone back up again now

The reason I always ate in evenings going back to when I was 21 is that when I tried eating during the day I felt full after a bite so even if I was able to eat or my stomach was rumbling also if I ate at lunchtime I would still eat my normal evening food so I noticed I would gain weight.

I do have depression, in fact today after 3 years of asking various doctors I have been prescribed anti depressants.