Salad of the Day

It wasn't a New Year's resolution. I swear. Even though it began suspiciously close to New Year's, I actually started it just before New Year's. You know, it. It being the thing EVERYONE seems to choose for a New Year's resolution. Lose weight!

I have about 50 pounds to lose. And by lose, I mean the way I occasionally accidentally never "lose" my husband's ratty old clothes and broken doo-dads (hi honey!). So that they are never found again. That kind of lose. The permanent kind.

So I made a goal to lose the weight and get healthier in general. Which always gets me SUPER MOTIVATED. I love making goals! I love coming up with new projects, and things to do, and goals. It's fun times! But I will admit it- I absolutely stink at following through. I am utterly notorious for starting projects and petering out halfway through because the next exciting shiny new project caught my eye and...SQUIRREL!! (I mean really, you just need to see that I haven't updated this blog in I'm-ashamed-to-admit-how-long to know how true that is.)

Ahem. Where was I? Right. The goal.

To help me stay motivated, I got involved in three different weight loss challenges. At the same time. It sounds crazy and it probably is.

The first one is with my sister, my mother and myself. We have things we can do each day to earn points (up to a max of 10 points per day), and we weigh in each week. At the end of our challenge we get to add up the points and use them to "buy" things for ourselves. New Smaller clothes, for example! And it's nice to have people to encourage me and, well, help keep me motivated. I like this plan because even if I don't end up with the most points, I still win something, so if I fall off the wagon for a couple days I won't feel like shrugging my shoulders and giving up because "well I'll never catch up in points now..." My sister and I also have a separate but related side goal of running a half marathon on Memorial Day. Woo!

The second one is between myself and my husband. He and I both need to lose some weight, although I have about twice as much to lose as he does to get down to a healthy range again. What can I say- four pregnancies will do that to a girl. Whoever loses less than the other person each week has to do something nice for the winner. I like this one because I am COMPETITIVE. I want to win! And so does my husband, lol.

The third and last is one of those weight challenges where you buy in and the winner(s) get the pot. There are two winners- the one who gets the most points and the one who loses the most weight. The group I'm competing with is awesome- competitive but supportive! And if I do win, that'll be a nice little slush fund, which (again) helps me stay motivated!

And all of that leads me to- the salad of the day! I'm really bad at eating vegetables (I love meat and carbs and fruits) but I know I need them. (It's also a way to earn points during the buy-in weight challenge- eat 3 servings of vegetables per day). I also want them to be tasty, and not too terribly much work. So I started making salads. The problem is that I [i]don't[/i] like dressings. At all. Don't ask me why, I have no idea! But none of the dressings ever seem quite right to me. At the same time, though, I know that eating some fats with your green leafies is very important, because otherwise you won't get the benefit of the fat-soluble vitamins. You need dietary fat in order to process those vitamins. Love handles don't count!

(DID YOU HEAR THAT, FAT-FREE SALAD DRESSING PEOPLE? YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!)

Ahem. I don't know what came over me. Back to the salads!

I found though that I was really enjoying the salad making. And the salad eating. I've made a few different ones so far and every one was quite tasty! And not a single one needed dressing, for either fat or flavor.

As I go along I shall post the salads I make, in the hopes that it might inspire some salad-and/or-veggie-haters. I'll even give the calorie breakdowns!

All of this is assuming that I don't get eaten by a giant White Whale or the Loch Ness monster sometime in the next week. If I don't post, you can assume that I just forgot to post one of the above scenarios was the author of my demise.

It could happen!