30 Days of Salads for Blood Sugar Control: My Five Realizations
I recently concluded my 30-Day Salad Challenge, a commitment to myself to eat one salad a day throughout the month of January. I love love food – all cuisines – and the thought of eating salads for 30 days is not necessarily exciting on day 1. The most important thing for me is that I don’t feel deprived or guilty for eating something. My goal was to stick to a healthy habit for 30 days while making it fun and bringing more adventure into my nutrition.
Here are my five realizations after 30 days of salads!
1. I ate a lot more vegetables and whole foods, especially by oven-roasting: carrots, asparagus, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, beets, potatoes, onions, all sorts of peppers, and more. It was fun to try veggies I have not prepared before like artichoke, endive, different kales, roasted garlic, etc. I started to prefer making salads a little more. There are so many delicious healthy foods and my eyes are open to how grateful I am to live in an area with such a variety of whole and nutritious foods – including using my own lemon tree! (I am obsessed with my Meyer Lemons – stay tuned for a review of my favorite lemon desserts that won’t spike your blood sugar).
2. Speaking of not spiking blood sugar, I developed a completely reliable blood sugar level after eating salads by nature of it being a lower glycemic meal! Even with the carbs in carrots, corn, tomatoes, potatoes and others – I wasn’t eating as many processed carbs. You know that idea of, “shop on the perimeter of the grocery store only?” That guideline will keep you away from higher glycemic foods that spike blood sugar (except those cinnamon buns near the dairy section at Raley’s – yum yum!)
3. It felt good to stick to a healthy habit. A challenge like this tests your mindset, commitment, and acted as my accountability. I am in the camp that it takes at least 30 days (and really 45+ days) to create a new habit, to build the foundation that informs your future preferences, choices, tendencies, and neuropathways.
4. Cooking became a fun routine. I started to enjoy cooking a lot! And it’s not actually that hard! Half the time was just chopping and tossing my favorite veggies with olive oil and a little salt and pepper, roasting them in the toaster oven on 350-400 for twenty minutes, making the dressing, and making choices. Putting together a salad is a skill you can learn to be creative with. When you are being creative (hello brunch salad – one of my favorite creations) and choosing the outcome, the part of your brain that operates fear and anxiety is turned off. It’s like the blood can only flow to one or the other – our creative, open, collaborative, problem solving side, or our primal, worrying and protective side that is much older and harder to turn off.
Cooking is practice living in the present moment. Maybe it’s a way to connect to someone else, or maybe yourself, exploring your preferences and testing what works with your blood sugar. Or maybe it’s simply an opportunity to give yourself joy and love in the form of a delicious, nourishing meal!
5. Lastly, making a daily salad is cost effective! I did not track exactly the cost savings of eating salads more, versus ordering take out or indulging in more expensive cuisine. However, making a daily salad was an excellent exercise in developing a frugal financial habit helpful for our financial health as much as our diabetes health. I try to choose organic, which can be pricier (not always!), and I was even inspired to eat more conscientiously like being aware of plant-based benefits and growing our own fruits and veggies, which I plan to do in the spring!
Challenges are tests. You are testing yourself. You are deciding what is a priority. You are deciding who you will be. You are giving yourself permission to make a change, take a risk. You are proving that you can go somewhere unknown. You are showing yourself you are worthy of success. You are aligning your desires with actions, and that makes you more confident. What are you more afraid of more – failing or succeeding? Could it be you are more afraid of success and what that will require? That brings me to the last point: Self-compassion. It’s ok if it isn’t perfect. Give yourself permission to fail, to mess up, to learn, to try again, to grow. You get to decide who you will become next and it takes experimenting to get there! Who will you give yourself permission to become?
