I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the biggest salad fan. My husband, on the other hand, could eat a salad every day and be happy. I know, weird. Here’s photo proof — Scott’s salad/BLT combo and my gluten free fish and chips. The few times we can eat out, there’s a wiring in my brain that says “You better splurge. Don’t waste this opportunity on a salad! Get something filling.”

Well, sad to say that this type of thinking has led to me pack on 8 of the 14 pounds I initially lost when I went gluten free in December of 2010. Ugghh.

In the past year and a half, I’ve explored all types of gluten free diet approaches, watched countless documentaries on food in America and become COMPLETELY overwhelmed. Grains or no grains? Meat or no meat? Dairy or no dairy?  I really don’t think it’s supposed to be this hard. What I know for sure is that I DO need to eat more vegetables and whole foods. Period. I remember thinking back to when the 14 pounds melted off me that it wasn’t so much what I was cutting out as what I was adding in. It was leafy greens. After awhile, laziness and lack of planning led me to forgo healthy choices in favor of quick, filler foods — albeit gluten free.

One of our family’s favorite meals is steak salad with a balsamic vinaigrette. It’s one of the quickest meals for me to prepare and every single one of us loves it. That’s a good starting point. My next step comes from one of my favorite blogs that I follow. It’s a vegan blog called Oh She Glows. She’s put out a friendly salad challenge for the month of June that I plan to participate in.

Why don’t you give one of her salads a try? Maybe participate in the challenge too? I’m looking forward to having more energy this summer and experimenting with my own salad creations. It should be fun. So instead of trying to restrict myself to a certain way of eating (i.e. vegan/paleo/primal/etc…) I’m simply going to incorporate more veggies. Period. It will be delicious ; )