Diet fads come and go, and with those ups and downs often is connected our health, our weight, our blood pressure issues, our diabetes issues, our gastrointestinal issues, etc. etc.
As our diets flip flop, often so does our health issues. What if we worked on healthy living lifestyles rather than on diets? Perhaps then we could better manage and stabilize our refrigerators, our food options, and our restaurant choices. Doing that could then help us manage our medication better and possibly reduce our need for certain procedures or even our need to visit our doctors or ER so frequently.
Here are 5 tips for impacting your food lifestyle just with salad:
• Recognize Salad is good. How you eat it is your choice. A salad can be wrapped, it can be “wilted”, it can be drizzled, it can be blended into a smoothie, and (wait for it) it can be a main course.
• Don’t think so drastically! Again, a diet will have you stop everything you love. Just add good foods to your current daily diet. If you live at fast food joints (Okay, maybe stop that) add a side salad to your chicken sandwich or hamburger meal (you see, I didn’t even say instead of the fries). You just have to MAKE SURE to eat the whole thing!! If Fried Chicken is your thing, still go to the local fried chicken place, but JUST GET THE CHICKEN; leave the other sides alone because you are going to eat a salad with your chicken thigh and wing.
• Go to one of the new salad restaurants for lunch and customize your salad. It seems a bit pricier, but you can usually split the salad over 2-3 meals.
• Get creative! Add roasted potatoes, add melons, add grapes or add grilled fish. If you make the salad your main dish, you tell “them” you have permission to put anything you want on the top of it.
• Don’t Drown the Salad!! Learn to drizzle your dressing and then toss your salad. We often combat the great affects of our leafed heroes with the artery clogging effects of a processed sauce with high sodium and sugar value – oops, I meant salad dressing.
This will not have you back at your cheerleading or football bodies, but it will help you as you make other decisions to impact your healthy and body. The goal with lifestyle choices is to do things that don’t create such a drastic change that you won’t keep up with them. Sustainability and stability will create security that you will hold on to for a very long time. And enjoy your salad (with your ribs, your steak, your slice of pie….)

Tanya Taylor Dingle
@taylordingle (Instagram)
#OYEMAMICOOKS
#MAKINGHEALTHYCOOL