Can You Lose Weight With A Salad?

You can lose weight with lettuce alone, but it has nothing to do with a healthy diet.

It is a classic misunderstanding of “healthy eating” that  you can lose weight with a salad.

In the salad alone does not put all the nutrients our bodies need and only one serving the wrong salad dressing may be less healthy than the hamburger in the American fast-food restaurant.

Learn in this post how you can lose weight healthily with salad.

“Just salad for me, please!”

… is the typical phrase of people who want to lose weight who want to keep their pounds under control with salad in a restaurant.

But as most people know, this self-sacrifice and the restriction to “just one salad” is rarely crowned with success on the scales. Why is that?

Salad is delicious and of course goes well with a healthy diet. All you have to do is make sure that it contains enough of all the macronutrients if you want to enjoy it as a full meal. These values ​​are roughly:

• Carbohydrates : Depending on how muscular and active you are, you will need at least 60-80g complex carbohydrates per meal. This could be, for example: 1 slice of rye bread: approx. 20g carbohydrates, 100g oat flakes (approx. 8-10 tablespoons): 63g carbohydrates, 100g uncooked noodles (approx. 1/4 pack): 60g carbohydrates. The rice or pasta salad isn’t such a bad idea! 100g uncooked rice (1/2 coffee mug uncooked): 74g KH
• Protein : A person weighing 70 kg therefore needs 56g (70 × 0.8 g) of protein per day. This corresponds to about 18g per meal (with 3 meals) and that in turn corresponds to a piece of meat of about 100g. And that is a steak only about the size of a playing card, which can also be added to the salad.
• Fat : The daily requirement of fat is covered with approx. 60 – 75g! This corresponds to approx. 20-25g fat per meal and that is already contained in just 100g minced meat, for example! If you eat fat, you should make sure that it is mainly high-quality vegetable oils with a healthy and balanced fatty acid ratio. A salad dressing made from pureed avocado would be conceivable.

And what of it is actually in the salad?

Generally speaking: nothing! Or better: not much! Of course, lettuce contains vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and fiber, but far less than you think!

It has to be a very large plate of salad for you to benefit from it. And then, actually, you already know, the salad dressing is the problem.

The more salad you eat, the more sauce you take with you. And nobody has to tell you that this is a fat and calorie bomb!

Just for a quick overview and comparison: One tablespoon of oil contains 10-12g fat and therefore at least 90 calories! You will certainly mix most salad dressings with the “Schwupp” system, ie “a Schwupp oil and a Schwupp vinegar …”.

If you make your sauce like this just once, using a tablespoon as a dosage, your eyes will open …

There is not much else in the salad that your body really needs to function properly. First and foremost, it gains energy for all important body functions from three macronutrients: carbohydrates, protein and fat.

As long as your salad is not a pasta, rice or potato salad, it hardly contains any carbohydrates. If it is not an egg, cheese or meat salad, it does not contain any protein. Just fat, and too much of it.

What exactly does your body need carbohydrates and protein for and why is it so important for losing weight?

carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for almost all types of activity. If you eat too little of it, the carbohydrate stores in the muscles and the liver are under-stocked, which limits physical (and also mental!) Performance.

An optimal supply of carbohydrates noticeably improves the overall body constitution.

In addition, your body can produce happiness hormones from complex carbohydrates (= grain products). So if you eat enough carbohydrates, your mood will rise too.

That’s why people who eat salads or other carbohydrate-free diets are not really pleasant contemporaries. A slice of whole grain bread with raw vegetables helps a lot!

protein

During normal physical activity, the (normal weight!) Body must be supplied with approx. 0.8g protein per kilo of body weight.

The actual protein intake in Germany exceeds this recommendation by approx. 50% and is approx. 1.2 g per kg of body weight per day. This value of 1.2g per kilo of body weight corresponds exactly to what the body should be given to build muscle during training phases.

Therefore, a protein supply through special protein preparations and “powder” is not necessary, on the contrary: Too high a protein supply stresses the kidneys, since excess protein is not metabolized, but has to be excreted again via the kidneys.

Some (reduced-fat) cheese, fish, lean meat or a yogurt sauce are good salad ingredients with protein.

fat

Dietary fats are suppliers of essential fatty acids, they are vitamin carriers and also vitamin suppliers and ultimately, as flavor carriers, they also ensure that a dish tastes “round”.

However, due to the many hidden fats in food, a fat-free diet is practically impossible.

However, fat also has the highest calorie density and more than twice as many calories per gram as protein or carbohydrates.

Excessive fat consumption is known to lead to obesity and nutritional diseases. So be especially careful with the sauce!