Salads and Diets

Think salads are boring?
Try to use a little imagination and you will be surprised at all of the tasty and healthy combinations you can come up with for creating a great tasting and healthy salad. After you have done that do a little research on line and you will find that there are virtually thousands of salads and salad combinations.

Let’s start with your basics like greens. There are dozens of varieties of lettuce and spinach or other base greens to start building your salad with. Now let’s choose some ingredients like a pepper or tomato maybe a cucumber or some garbanzo beans and let’s not forget the onion. These are all very basic starter vegetables so let’s get a little more creative and add some dried cranberries and instead of a boring dressing form a bottle we will make our own. We will start with olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and to that we will add a dash of cayenne pepper some fresh mint leaves and shake well. Now drizzle your dressing over your salad and add a sprinkle of pine nuts for that nutty flavor and a little crunch.

Not only is this salad loaded with vitamins and minerals that are good for you but it can taste great with a little effort. If you like a hearty salad add grilled fish or chicken and even an occasional boiled egg can be a tasty way to add protein. While we are at it why don't we have a salad for breakfast too? Yep we can come up with a great fruit filled salad using a melon for a bowl and things like bananas and Mandarin oranges instead of traditional vegetables. This will be an energy filled low calorie fat free way to start our day.

Let’s take a moment to look at all of the components of a good diet and how that is going to work with our salad eating. First we need to cut back on things like fat, bad cholesterol and carbohydrates from starches. Our salads are only going to incorporate white meats like fish and chicken without the skin that have been baked or grilled. This is going to cut out a lot of fats and bad cholesterol.

Next we are not eating potatoes or breads so we have cut down on starches and bleached flours which have little or no nutritional value. These steps have allowed us to cut countless empty calories from our daily intake which will allow us to lose weight more easily. Now even more importantly we have started a supply line of vitamins and minerals directly from fresh fruits and vegetables to our digestive systems.

This is the best way to insure that our bodies get all of the nutrition they need to stay healthy and in top fat burning shape.