The Non Veggie Eater

[cd1005]

Im looking for any kind of help!!!

I am now 30 years old and have spent my entire life and I mean entire life NOT eating veggies. Dont get me wrong I still try various types and ways of them being cooked but I still cant get my self to actually eat them. I will eat potatoes and corn, go figure the 2 starches.... I used to drink the power form of veggies that you could get at GNC but that eventually became to much for me to do, the taste was awful. I use the fiber powders for now just to get the fiber that I need.

I want to be healthy and right now i dont feel that. I am 5'2 and currently my weight goes between 140-150 (big jump i know). I have no energy or desire to do anything except go to work and come home. I used to be very active but now not so much.

I would just appreciate some ideas on how to get what i need since i dont eat the veggies that have what i need!!

Thanks

[5kgLifter]

What is the rest of your diet like: do you eat meats? do you eat fruit? do you eat bread/pasta/rice?

As a kid I only ever used to eat potato and I had no ill effect from it..I hated veg...the I just started eating carrots...then a year later I added peas etc.

But you can get all the necessary energy you require from carbs (bread/potato/pasta) and other fuel sources for building the immune system (meat/fish/protein in general). Lack of vegetables does not mean lethargy, normally...and fibre is found in bread, so you shouldn't need to add a fibre drink in if you are getting plenty of bread etc. Most foods have some fibre in them.

[MckennaWilson]

Have you ever tried juicing vegetables? A great tasting juice is carrot and apple - you basically see the carrot and taste the apple. Once you get used to that you could start adding in things like beetroot, cabbage, celery, tomato, spinach - slowly but surely. Then when you get used to the different tastes you could add some of the pulp back into the juice and get more used to it.
But being really honest here, you really need to eat veggies or you'll do your digestive system some serious damage! Not to mention the way your body functions. This is why you don't have any energy and are so tired all the time. I have a friend who stopped eating fresh fruit and veggies when she was about 20 and hasn't eaten much in a couple years now. She is ill all the time. She gets UTI's all the time and probably has gall stones... so do yourself a favour and try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to down something fresh!

[cd1005]

i eat beef, chicken, some fish, rice, pasta, and breads. I try to cook healthy for my family, thankfully they all love veggies, i cook them just dont eat them. I have not tried to jucie my own, but i do drink V8 juice, i know that seems odd but that i can drink. As for my digestive track, it is already beyond repair. I have ulcerative colitis, IBS, ulcerative proctitis, gastritis, and severe acid reflux. I have been dealing with this for years, my doctor wants more fiber in my diet which is why i have to add it. He realizes that I will not eat the veggies so this was his solution. Im sure the "itis's" have a lot to do with my fatigue which is another reason why i want to become a more healthy person. I will try to juice my own fruit and add the veggies. thanks for the advice.

[DORKtoDIVA]

How do you cook them? A lot of people find they hate boiled veggies (or whatever) but actually like them lightly steamed (or vice versa).

I did not eat vegetables as a kid at all (between me and my father, my mother quit cooking them). When I was 22 I decided I wanted to like vegetables. I started slow. I decided I wanted to like spinach; I knew dark, leafy greens were very nutritious. So I ate some spinach. Yuck. But I ate it again, maybe a week later. Eh. I ate it about 10 times at at that point I did not like it but was perfectly capable of eating it without making faces. That's key - eating a food about 10 times habituates yourself to it. Plus of course you want the mental choice to want to eat it.

After spinach, I tried broccoli. That probably was a hard vegetable to get used to (smelly, gassy, etc.) but since I had gotten used to the spinach, it was a little easier. Still icky at first, I promise you. I definitely like broccoli on the al dente side, not boiled into a floppy, smelly mess. Or raw with dip.

So when I figured out that I personally like lightly steamed veggies (or raw in some cases - I'm still not a huge fan of steamed carrots, for example) I actually got to LIKE vegetables! Really! Within a year of starting my veggie journey, I liked EVERY common vegetable except cabbage, and even cabbage I was willing to eat if it was in front of me.

This year I joined a CSA - in case you haven't heard of those, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture. I bought a share of this year's crop, and every week I pick up my veggies direct from the farm (local, organic, wonderful stuff). Vegetables are actually the base of my diet now, not starches (though I do eat rice and I make my own pizza from scratch, etc. - but the point is that the rice accompanies the veggies I put over it, not the other way around). I am sure to prepare my veggies with some good fats as well, such as extra virgin olive oil or fresh butter or pastured meat. While we live in a fat-phobic society, eating greens with some fats (say, salad dressing) actually helps the absorption of nutrients!

I also prefer to make vegetables into a full dish, rather than just a side of plain green beans or whatever. I might stuff a lasagna with vegetables, or some other casserole dish. Stir-fry is yummy; I stir fry a head of cabbage in olive oil and add whatever veggies I have on hand (onions, carrots, swiss chard stems, whatever!), add fresh garlic, ginger, soy sauce and a couple tablespoons of creamy peanut butter at the end, serve on brown rice, yum! Very filling and delicious, and the peanut butter gives me a lot of energy too!

So, I know for a fact you can go from hating all vegetables to absolutely embracing them!