[HoosierHeather]

get tired of salads?

Seriously, I'm only on day 5, and I'm feeling way better than I did on days 1 & 2 (and after realizing I wasn't eating enough). I'm just not used to eating salads so much. But I don't think I'll get enough to EAT and/or enough VEGGIES if I forego them. Does anyone have suggestions?

I know lots of families have a salad with dinner every night, but we've just never been like that.

[lottie63]

I eat radish "homefries" and cheesy green beans and szechuan broccoli and peanut butter/celery and roasted cauliflower, I rarely eat salads.

[Barb0522]

I've only recently started to eat salad with dinner and I've been on SB for two years! Dinner tonight is shrimp stir fry. Lots of onion, peppers, celery, mushrooms and asparagus. I almost forgot the snowpeas in my stir fry. I had to go add them and I remembered.

I fix lots of different side dishes depending on what I am making. I love the Kale, Black Bean and Tomato dish. I often fix 2 or three different sides. There are lots of good recipes here. I add spinash to pasta dishes. Other good additions to pasta are squash, mushrooms and asparagus. You will have to wait until phase 2 for pasta but in phase 1, I often served dishes over steamed cabbage. I still do that sometimes because I like it so much.

Check out the recipe section. There are lots of recipes with vegetables.

[smartypants]

I eat a lot of salads for lunch beacuse it's fast. I mostly eat a large protion of veggies w/ dinner. Lottie sounds like she has found ways to spice up veggies.

[batmomm2000]

I actually really love salads so I still eat them a lot but you certainly don't have too. There are tons of great veggies side dishes or main dishes that you can have. Do you like eggplant? you can make lots of pasta type dishes with it

[beachgal]

Hey, Heather! You're not alone...the number one complaint I hear about SBD goes something like this (can you tell that I've had this conversation a lot? ):

Inquisitive Person: Wow, how did you lose all that weight?
Me: I'm doing the South Beach Diet.
IP: Oh, I tried that. I lasted [insert short amount of time here]. I just couldn't deal with all those salads!

Okay, I'm better now. The thing I find so ironic is that it seems to be a general consensus that if you do SBD you have to eat a gazillion salads. I have to be honest and say that I've gone over a month without touching a salad. When I do eat salads it's because I want to, not because I have to. I'm not upset with you, Heather! I just get frustrated that people give up this plan when no one told them they had to eat salad six times a day! So...please don't give up for that reason, okay?

There a gazillion ways to get your veggies in. I commend you for thinking about it and for paying attention to your body so that you realized you needed to eat more than you were in the beginning. That's great!

Here are some ideas:

• Make casseroles and throw in extra veggies. Mushrooms are easy to add in to many dishes, as is finely chopped broccoli, shredded carrots (in P2), etc. Some good casseroles for this are:Taco Bake (P1), Chicken Divan (P1), Eggplant Lasagna (P1), the Chicken and Eggplant casserole from the SBD cookbook (P1), and others here and in the SBD books.
• Make stir fry!
• Think about veggie side dishes instead of starches. Have cole slaw, 3-bean salad, or other things with your hamburgers rather than chips.
• Check out a couple of Vegetarian cookbooks from the library for tons of great ideas for working with vegetables to make interesting side dishes.
• Get premade frozen veggies with their own sauces. My favorites are made by Birds Eye and have only olive oil and herbs to put on top of them. They are so good!
• Consistently look for ways to slip more veggies into your daily routine...like using angel hair cabbage as a base for the taco bake or in place of lettuce on sandwiches (crunchier and more nutritious).

Hope that gets you started! There are so many great veggie dishes that there's no reason to eat a salad unless you want to.