If you are looking for healthy ways to lose weight, you will find plenty of options to be either including or excluding from your daily diet. Many people eat salad as the easiest method for weight loss.
But you know what? Many people can also be seen eating salad for gaining weight. Yes, you heard right – ‘Salads for weight gain’.
Confused? How can a salad be eaten to gain weight?
It is all due to the ingredients you add to prepare the salad. Some salad ingredients are packed with fat and calories, while some do not satisfy you and urge you to eat soon after having your salad, which does not let you lose weight.
No doubt, replacing heavy meals containing high calories with a healthy salad is the best way to lose those extra pounds. But at the same time, it is very important to include diet-friendly ingredients to prepare a healthy salad. You can also add toppings full of nutrients, flavor and even contains low levels of fat and calories.
Best Salad Ingredients for Weight Loss
- Salad Greens
- Colorful Vegetables
- Healthy Fat
- Add Protein
- Add Herbs
Here is the list of best salad ingredients for weight loss which you must consider while preparing a healthy salad.
Salad Greens
When you are going to prepare a diet-friendly salad, the very first thing it should include as the base is the salad greens. Like if you are preparing a salad with ingredients rich in fat and calories then you must add the salad greens in it.
You can choose beans as the salad base if you want to eat protein or can even choose different types of lettuce as the best source of low-calorie.
This may confuse you about what to add as the salad greens when you have so many options. To add flavor, you can have fresh spring greens and then add layers of crispy greens to enjoy little crunchiness in the salad.
For spring greens, you can have spinach, watercress, mustard greens, beet greens, and others, while, for crisp greens, you can choose to have iceberg, endive, lettuce, etc. Additionally, you can add a handful of cabbage for that extra crunch into the salad.
Colorful Vegetables
When it comes to the best salad ingredients for weight loss, you cannot forget or ignore vegetables in any way. For the diet-friendly salad, in addition to salad greens, vegetables are considered as the most important ingredients for a healthy salad. The list of best vegetables comes in a variety of colors, flavors, and nutrients, so when you add different vegetables in the salad, it not only looks colorful but gives all essential nutrients as well.
List of some vegetables based on their colors:
- For red, you can add chopped tomato, red onion, sliced radish, red peppers, beet, and red potato.
- For orange, you can add sliced or shredded carrot, orange peppers, orange tomatoes and even diced sweet potato.
- For yellow and white, you can add chopped sweet onion, boiled or cooked corn, chopped yellow tomato, yellow peppers, sliced mushrooms, chopped shallots, white asparagus.
- For blue and purple, you can add chopped purple potatoes, purple cabbage, purple peppers.
- For green, you have so many options to add green to your salad, such as chopped green tomato, broccoli, peas, chopped or sliced cucumber, celery, etc.
Healthy Fat
One thing you should know that if you are preparing a healthy salad for weight loss, it must be satisfying so that you do not have the urge to eat anything after eating your salad. In this case, you must include ingredients containing healthy fats.
It is true that when you add ingredients as the source of healthy fat, it will increase the level of calories to your diet-friendly salad; it is so because such fats are a great source of calories. So, make sure to add them to your salad recipe in a moderate quantity.
Ingredients:
- Avocado – 1-2 tablespoons per serving
- Olives – 8-10 olives per serving
- Olive Oil – 1-2 tablespoons per serving
- Nuts – 10-15 different kinds of nuts in total per serving
- Seeds – 1-2 tablespoons of different kinds of seeds per serving
Add Protein
You must add sources of protein in your salad if it is your main meal. This way, the salad recipe as the main course of the meal not only provides the required muscle-building benefits to your body but also keeps your stomach full for a longer time after having your full bowl of salad.
If you love meat, you can add the chopped turkey, lean roast beef or chicken to the salad. Always keep in mind that all deli meats are not good to eat when you are thinking of losing weight. For this, you must go for deli meats such as shredded roast pork, turkey, sliced roast beef, and grilled chicken.
You can also add seafood such as salmon, tuna, shrimp, and sardines. Moreover, other protein sources include quinoa, brown rice, barley, etc.
Add Herbs
Herbs have their own importance when it comes to the best salad ingredients for weight loss. The chopped herbs are considered as the best way to add flavor to the salad.
No doubt, you can add dried herbs to your salad, but adding chopped fresh herbs is a great idea to add healthy and nutritious ingredients to your diet-friendly salad. The different kinds of herbs you can add are chives, parsley, dill, thyme, chervil, etc.
Fresh herbs are also recommended to avoid the need for salad dressing, as a result of which your intake of calories and fat count also reduces.
Conclusion
These best salad ingredients for weight loss will help you to prepare the perfect salad recipe which you will surely love to have for breakfast, as snacks or even as a main meal.
Make sure to keep these points in mind to have a healthy and nutritious salad.
