A few years ago, when this healthy living stuff was a little newer to me and my weight loss was recent, I was much stricter about what I ate.

Oat bran with plain yogurt and ground flax, salads with no dressing, shirataki noodles, and fat-free dairy were all a regular part of my diet. Those are all healthy foods. The trouble is: I thought they tasted awful.

I made myself eat them not because I wanted to eat them, but because I thought I should be eating them. By forgoing anything sweet in my morning yogurt, leaving the dressing off my salads and swapping real noodles for low-calorie ones, I thought I was making smart decisions. I would learn to like them, I thought.

In those days, I was a features copy editor at a large daily newspaper. I often ate breakfast and lunch at my desk. I would pull out my beige and white breakfast, dry salads and other wacky creations, and my co-workers would peer over the walls diving our cubes and cringe.

Crinkling their noses, they'd ask, "You're eating that?"

"Yes," I replied with a sigh. "It's good for me."

I was a Healthy Foods Martyr, forgoing taste for nutrition. Sure, there were plenty of healthy foods that I liked, but I thought I should also eat all healthy foods--even if they didn't taste good.

Grudgingly I ate my healthy breakfast and lunch, but it's no surprise that I would often break down and overeat at dinnertime. Even though my diet was full of healthy foods I did like, for some reason I thought I should also eat foods I didn't like.

Eventually, I stopped eating foods I didn't like (like the shirataki noodles and fat-free cheese that didn't) or modified them to be more palatable (some blueberries in the plain yogurt, cooked oat bran instead of raw).

With so many good-for-you foods out there, life is too short to eat the ones you dislike. I know that kale is a really nutritious green, but spinach, Swiss chard, arugula, and mixed baby greens are also nutritious. Lower-fat dairy has much more flavor and better texture than fat-free does, in my opinion. And whole-wheat pasta is filling and nutritious.

My diet is probably healthier now that I allow myself to eat the healthy foods I like, and I overeat less than I did back then. I look forward to my next meal instead of dreading it. To me, that's worth it!

If you're having trouble learning to like any healthy food, read more:

Learn to Love Vegetables: 8 Tips
How to Meet Your Protein Needs without Meat
Whole Grains are the Whole Package
11 Dairy-Free Calcium Sources

Do you force yourself to eat healthy foods you don't like? Which ones?