TL;DR: Yeah, changing your diet is going to feel like you're eating stuff you don't enjoy. Just try to stick to your convictions and give it a month or so, you're very likely to find your tastes change in response to your diet change.
"Water tastes fantastic. It's sweet. An all-soda-and-mcsquats' diet has killed your taste buds, so anything that isn't loaded with sugar and salt (never mind the Coke, your McChicken has a crazy amount of added sugar) will taste bland to you. Cut the crap out of your diet, and the good stuff will taste good again."
This is _so_ true.
I'm still fighting a battle with my own brain which I've been fighting (on and off) for 5 or 10 years now.
I don't actually like french fries, but my brain keeps tricking me into eating them. I spent so much of my life eating them that the smell, their appearance on a menu, even sometimes just the idea of fries; triggers incredibly strong desires to buy and eat them.
If I resist those desires for 3 or 4 weeks, then "give in" and eat some, they're incredibly disappointing - they strike me as slimy/oily salty mush with an unappealing flavour and leave me with an unsatisfying heavy feeling in my gut. This (sometimes) makes it really easy for me to only eat a few, then not buy any again for quite a long time.
But for some reason, my brain retains the "OMG! Fries! I want some!" memories _way_ more strongly than the "Oh, actually they're not very nice..." ones. And it's _so_ easy (for me) to drop back into the habit of eating them, and once I've eaten just half a serve or so, the unpleasant oilyness and flavour somehow doesn't affect me any more. Then I need to struggle through the 3 or 4 weeks of denying myself something I'm strongly convinced I really want to eat again.
The same for sodas - though it's easier for me to (more or less healthily) work around the soda-desire by buying diet soda instead of sugar (of hfcs) laden soda... (which just leave me open to the problems with chemical sweeteners, but for now I'm writing that down as less of a concern than the sugar/calories of regular soda).
At a guess, I strongly suspect the "fast food industry"'s manipulation of fat, sugar, and salt levels; is very strongly targeted at manipulating our tastes and desires to make us think we enjoy their version of "food" over what food really tastes like.
On the positive side, over ~10 years I've managed to get from a high of ~130kg (285lb) down to a fairly consistent 92kg (202lb) - I'm still "overweight", but I've settled on a diet/lifestyle that's a lot healthier than I had a decade ago. I need to "get fit" now, if I can incorporate some proper exercise into my lifestyle, I'm pretty sure I will be able to drop the next 10-15kg to get down to the 75-80kg (165-175lb) that the health industry says is "normal" for my height... (This is also something I've had many more or less successful false-starts at, I manage to get into the habit of walking for 40min to an hour 3 or 4 times a week, and keep it up for a few weeks or months, but then something interrupts the habit and I have to struggle with myself to start it up again...)
I have the same problem as palish: I want my water to taste like something :) (and we do have some excellent water here).
My brain does want me to eat fries and salty stuff, too.
I managed to go down to about 200 lb which is still overweight (and in my country it IS considered overweight, like palish would be as well), I'd like to go down to 75-80 kg as well but I work 12 hs and study 4 (Master's degree, plus it kills my entire weekend). I managed to go down 10 kg in 2 months with a diet of about 1000 calories, but it was killing me (I've since regained 8 of the 10 kgs).
Food did start to taste better at the end of that diet, but I still love the sugary and salty unhealthy stuff.
"Water tastes fantastic. It's sweet. An all-soda-and-mcsquats' diet has killed your taste buds, so anything that isn't loaded with sugar and salt (never mind the Coke, your McChicken has a crazy amount of added sugar) will taste bland to you. Cut the crap out of your diet, and the good stuff will taste good again."
This is _so_ true.
I'm still fighting a battle with my own brain which I've been fighting (on and off) for 5 or 10 years now.
I don't actually like french fries, but my brain keeps tricking me into eating them. I spent so much of my life eating them that the smell, their appearance on a menu, even sometimes just the idea of fries; triggers incredibly strong desires to buy and eat them.
If I resist those desires for 3 or 4 weeks, then "give in" and eat some, they're incredibly disappointing - they strike me as slimy/oily salty mush with an unappealing flavour and leave me with an unsatisfying heavy feeling in my gut. This (sometimes) makes it really easy for me to only eat a few, then not buy any again for quite a long time.
But for some reason, my brain retains the "OMG! Fries! I want some!" memories _way_ more strongly than the "Oh, actually they're not very nice..." ones. And it's _so_ easy (for me) to drop back into the habit of eating them, and once I've eaten just half a serve or so, the unpleasant oilyness and flavour somehow doesn't affect me any more. Then I need to struggle through the 3 or 4 weeks of denying myself something I'm strongly convinced I really want to eat again.
The same for sodas - though it's easier for me to (more or less healthily) work around the soda-desire by buying diet soda instead of sugar (of hfcs) laden soda... (which just leave me open to the problems with chemical sweeteners, but for now I'm writing that down as less of a concern than the sugar/calories of regular soda).
At a guess, I strongly suspect the "fast food industry"'s manipulation of fat, sugar, and salt levels; is very strongly targeted at manipulating our tastes and desires to make us think we enjoy their version of "food" over what food really tastes like.
On the positive side, over ~10 years I've managed to get from a high of ~130kg (285lb) down to a fairly consistent 92kg (202lb) - I'm still "overweight", but I've settled on a diet/lifestyle that's a lot healthier than I had a decade ago. I need to "get fit" now, if I can incorporate some proper exercise into my lifestyle, I'm pretty sure I will be able to drop the next 10-15kg to get down to the 75-80kg (165-175lb) that the health industry says is "normal" for my height... (This is also something I've had many more or less successful false-starts at, I manage to get into the habit of walking for 40min to an hour 3 or 4 times a week, and keep it up for a few weeks or months, but then something interrupts the habit and I have to struggle with myself to start it up again...)