The Salad Challenge is a 30-day commitment to healthy eating to prioritize your health, increase your energy through nutrition, build confidence in fostering healthy choices, and expressing creativity through cooking + experimenting for yourself. There are other benefits like building a preference for healthier choices long term, losing weight, and of course better blood sugar ranges + reducing insulin needs for T1Ds.
The premise is: one meal every day must be a salad. Preferably it’s a salad you make at home. Going out for a salad is ok but encouraged only here and there over the 30 days. If you have dinner plans, make your salad for lunch if you can.
Preparing your daily salad at home is an important element because the salad can be whatever you want. There is a structure and themes help shape your salads, but creativity is encouraged around your favorite foods + flavors. Cooking at home will naturally steer you to healthier outcomes. It’s a chance to try any food you want to make. That weird root vegetable, off-color pepper, medley of dark & light unusual lettuces, or local seasonal fruit you would never get. Roast and steam and slow cook for warm winter comfort.
It’s also a chance to treat yourself to all of the other accoutrements. Quality you may not typically buy: fresh cheeses, unique nuts and berries, farm eggs to test at all temperatures, spices, organic produce if you have access (organic everything ideally), different seafoods, meats, olive oils + vinegars.
Is your favorite meal a cheeseburger or burrito or pizza? Perfect! You can make a salad out of them on your own imaginative terms.
It’s a commitment for your health and also intention of starting with yourself. Mindset is influenced by health (and blood sugar levels for T1Ds), the way all areas of life influence each other, and as the month goes on your commitment to yourself will take a life of it’s own. Once you start to prioritize your health you will make better choices overall. You can’t help it; your determination & healthy spiral up influences all bars to rise higher.
In January 2021, a year after I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, the Salad Challenge was founded to encourage healthy eating for better blood sugar control. It was a huge challenge for me because I was still adjusting my eating habits for my diabetes and I also wasn’t a big salad fan. My diabetes had been undiagnosed for a while (until mid 2019) and while I was losing weight significantly before doctors figured it out, I had some unhealthy eating habits because of my body’s effects from high blood sugar.
In January 2022, the second annual Salad Challenge was a foundation for making other healthy choices for myself, like expressing more creativity on my own with flavors + nutrition, reducing alcohol (I added a springtime challenge where I cut out alcohol for 60 days), and making other creative choices for myself like to write a chapter in a book that is set to be published in January 2023 as we enter the third annual Salad Challenge.
Healthy habits start small to build trust with yourself. They help quiet the noise. Focus inward. Spend the time and the resources on yourself first. Confidence grows when you show yourself you are worth it. Others will be there for you but your biggest anchor in your health must be cultivated to be you.
