Do you have to eat salad to lose weight?

[Anonymous]

I remember in my early 20s I ate salads the whole summer almost and I ended up the skinniest I’ve ever been. Now I hate salads and can’t stomach them. Do I have to eat salad to be thin again? Salad is gross to be at this age and I don’t get enough energy from them even when I add chicken and egg. I’m confused how vegans survive. I’d would be so weak eating only vegetables.

[abc3643]

The more plants you eat, the better.

Fruits are naturally high in sugar, so be careful with fruit salads.

But vegetable salads are a great way to 1) get water in you, 2) get filled with few calories, 3) get some good nutrients in you.

The killer bad thing with salads are the added fats like cheese and thick creamy salad dressing. You won't lose weight if you add those. A nice viniagrette made by hand is often good - just a little bit of olive oil and red wine vinegar The oil may contain Omega-3,6,9 fatty acids which are good. It's also OK to add some lean meat - like white meat chicken. This gives your protein which you also would get from cheese but not the fats that come with cheese.

I hated salads too. I began to eat them myself when I was 24 and going for a PhD.

Now, something else you can do is like a salad, but not.
Make a "mirepoix" to snack on.

A classic mirepoix ("mere pwah") consists of 1 part carrots, 1 part celery, and 2 parts onions.
You can wing it - it doesn't have to be exact - but take those raw vegetables and chop them up to the point that they are finger food, then mix them together. I'll make a batch of mirepoix and store it in those 1-quart Chinese food containers (like for wonton soup). You can snack on mirepoix all day long... and it's very tasty.

Oh, just remembered... I posted in Facebook about this in December. You can see what it looks like...

Raw Mire Poix: Diced carrots, celery, onions

My one friend commented: "That's a super smart and healthy snack!"
I did cut the veggies small in the mirepoix pictured above - I basically did a large dice of them. You can make them bigger.
If you make bigger, then each piece is like a single finger food like a cheeto, but with a small dicing, you can eat a fistful like M&Ms.

Anyway, anything that is tasty and only 133 calories in 1 pound is pretty good to help with dieting.

[abc3643]

I just wanted to add...

A mirepoix is usually thought of as an ingredient. For instance, look at chicken soup... celery, onions, carrots, chicken, noodles... so chicken soup is really a cooked mirepoix and chicken and noodles with water added.

Which brings me to something else. A soup is, in a sense, a very wet salad with water.
Consider eating lots of clear broth soups you make yourself but without noodles or dumplings, etc.
The universe of soups is amazing and, as long as you get rid of the high carb stuff like noodles and breads, you can get lots of flavor and nutrition and water which is important for dieting all in one shot.

ALSO, consider drinking lots of mineral water. You get minerals with "high bioavailability" meaning that it gets into your body more easily than if you eat them. I drink Topo Chico all day now. But, you can always add lemon or lime juice for a little more flavor. That's the idea behind Bubly and LaCroix - carbonated water with slight flavoring, but not the oceans of sugar in sodas.

ALSO, sugar free Jell-O. Jell-O has so much natural flavor you don't need the sugar in normal Jell-O. You can eat a quart of Jell-O and it fills you up and keeps you hydrated for very very few calories. And Jell-O is cheap - especially if you buy the store brand. But, again, get sugar free.

[Xylem1992]

The only thing you need to lose weight is keeping a calorie deficit. You can have steaks and cakes everyday if you keep the calories in check. You gain them by food, lose them by exercise.

If the calorie gain is less than the calorie loss, you'll lose weight regardless of the type of the food you're eating.

[Mulan8]

Eat everything but less then you always eat and move as much as you can

[Astarlessnightsky]

No, technically you could eat just chocolate and still loose weight if you pay attention to the amount and calories.

Also you could burn an extra calorie with sports.

[Papabubbles]

I've been on diets my whole live, the best answer I've found is you need to get something to track your output and control your input more calories burned than consumed.

[chriscdi]

It might help more but you don't have too, I lost a lot of weight and haven't touched a salad