Autism

You don't need a diet with variety so much as you need a balanced diet. I would attempt to find foods in each category that you need that you are comfortable with and stick with those. Maybe something like Chicken, rice, vegetable. As long as you can work out a meal plan to cover your nutritional needs, you should not have to deviate from your plan.

Processed foods are not universally bad for you. Some are healthier than others. The idea is to try a bunch of the better ones, see which you like.

As far as unprocessed foods. Apples tend to be very consistent. There are lots of kinds. Find one you like (mine is Honeycrisp) get lots of those for quick snacks.

I'm not going to be a huge help, but what are your safe foods? Maybe start with replacing takeaway with heated at home? Many takeaway fried foods come frozen in the grocery store and heat quite well in an air fryer. Others microwave half decent.

Eventually, maybe grab a new thing from the store to try out alongside your normal food. (I have a huge habit of ordering an extra thing from restaurants to try things though, so this may not help you much. For me having a backup let's me explore a bit more)

I don't see how your sensory issues affect my eating habits. We don't even know each other!

I made a habit of getting drunk before trying new foods. I’m not sure I’m healthier as a result. I eat a larger variety of healthier foods now (mostly vegetables), but I’m still anxious about eating with people I don’t know really well because I don’t like a lot of common foods that aren’t particularly healthy.

The other upside is that trying different things gave me ideas for how to cook and season vegetables that I didn’t like in ways that I would like them, which opened up that whole arena a lot more. My mom usually served canned vegetables with pepper and it gave me a bad idea of what vegetables could be. Then again, maybe having those bad experiences early on made it easier for the good ones to take later.

Some tricks I’ve picked up over the years:

Frozen veggies tend to cook into a more consistent texture, which can help with dealing with them. Fresh vegetables seem to just vary weirdly in both taste and texture and that can be a lot to deal with, so going frozen means I have to deal with less variance.

Freeze dried stuff for seasoning, to me anyway, feels much easier to control the flavor levels. I hate onion when there’s too much, and hoo boy is it easy to overdo the onion. But freeze dried onion seems to be less dominant so I can still get some onion without overdoing it.

There’s no shame in having a handful of easy recipes you know are good, healthy, and easy to make (in case it’s a low energy kind of day) and for me the routine of knowing a meal I’ve prepared a thousand times in the same way every time makes it easier to tackle. Then I can feel alright about a healthy meal without it being overwhelming.

Hopefully some of this information is helpful, it’s what I’ve found that gets me through dinner time.

May not be a ton of use to you but like someone else mentioned frozen vegetables can be a great idea. They're pretty consistent in texture and size and if you struggle with executive functioning (there can be a lot of prep and steps in a meal) they're great. I value convenience and simplicity a lot so my go-to healthy meal is one that takes maybe 40 mins but most of that is just letting it cook.

I have a cheap rice cooker, I add equal parts rice and red split lentils (they cook at the same rate), water, frozen vegetables (I go with carrots and onions since they're cheap), a splash of olive oil, some spices, salt, and lemon juice just because I like a bit of acidity.

I give them a quick mix and let it go until the pot says it's ready. I'll also make enough for 2 or 3 meals so I can easily reheat some in the microwave later. It's pretty cheap, easy, and in that one meal alone I'm getting 3 of my 5 a day.