Salads: How To Do It Right

Salads are sneaky. We think they're healthy. I mean, it's just a pile of lettuce, right? Wrong. Salads are healthy...until you douse it in a gallon of fat-filled dressing. When dressing your salad, here are some things to consider:

• No bacon bits; use grilled chicken, fish, or shrimp instead (a palm-sized amount of meat)
• No croutons or crackers
• Limit the amount of cheese used (and try to use reduced fat cheese)
• You should only use 2-3 TEASPOONS of fat free salad dressing-- that should be enough to coat the salad leaves. There should not be glops of dressing left at the bottom of your salad bowl after you've finished eating.
• Good toppings for salads include: chopped tomato, red onion, chopped bell peppers (any color), mushrooms, 1 deviled egg
• Use a mixture of iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce and spinach leaves. The spinach and romaine lettuce have more nutrients than the iceberg lettuce does.

The moral of this post here is that you can be tricked into thinking you're having a healthy meal by having a salad, but if you load it up with very unhealthy food items, it completely negates the fact that you're eating a salad. At that point, you may as well have a cheeseburger and fries.

However, if you follow the guidelines above, you can eat your meal knowing that you did in fact make a healthy salad, and all will be well!!