salad dressing that helps you lose weight

  • recipe for a salad dressing that helps you lose weight
  • why your body loves this recipe!
  • example meal that unlocks your H 🙂 PPY weight

So you’re at the grocery store pushing your cart down the condiment aisle, looking for a salad dressing that helps you lose weight.

Your eye catches the words:

Low-fat!
Ultra-low fat!
& No-fat!

Hmmm… they all sound like a good idea, right?

WRONG.

When you understand the type of salad dressing that helps you lose weight, EVERY single food choice will be easier!

When you understand the type of salad dressing that helps you lose weight, EVERY single food choice will be easier!

Ready to unlock your H 🙂 PPY weight without punishing yourself?

I’ll show you how!

Let’s get started…

Got salad dressing in your fridge?

My friend Julie’s husband is from England.

As you know, my partner Alex is too.

I actually met Julie, Nigel and Alex all on the same night, at a pub on Munster Road in Fulham.

Here we are on a boat.

I actually met Julie, Nigel and Alex all on the same night, at a pub on Munster Road in Fulham

This pic was taken pre-Instagram.

Anyways, when Alex and I moved back to Canada, Julie and Nige came to our rental apartment on the first floor of a small house on Bathurst St. in Toronto.

They’d just popped in for dessert (after he proposed to her atop the CN Tower).

And I distinctly remember Nigel saying:

North American fridges are big but the extra space is only used for condiments.

I thought that was an astute observation from a guy busy playing beer pong on the floor of our front room.

Why we didn’t have oodles of salad dressing in our fridge

The 4 of us were used to our tiny flats in London that only came with a bar fridge.

Alex and I (and so many other young couples) bought everything fresh on our way home from work.

After supply teaching at a different primary school around London, almost every day, I’d go to Caffè Nerd (Caffè Nero) to wait for Alex.

I’d park myself at a table and nurse a latte over the 2 hour window I could dedicate to writing. I tapped away on my lap top—our first ever “win” off ebay (!)

My goal? To complete a fictional story about a girl who had an eating disorder.

Eating disorders are almost never discussed

Why aren’t there any movies that even take a peak at this topic? More than 30 million Americans alone live with a complicated relationship with food. I mean, the disordered eating bit could just be a subplot! A side-story to something bigger—there’s always something bigger, unexpected and waaaaay more interesting going on, isn’t there?

Silence creates unnecessary shame around weight loss and disordered eating. And shame leads to secrecy which isolates you with misinformation that keeps you sick. Like everyone thinks weight loss is about willpower. It’s not! This web of confusion traps people and keeps them jumping from diet to diet so you keep investing in an industry that sets you up to fail.

…As the fog of my disordered eating was lifting, all the above was coming clear.

But I had no idea how to tell my disordered eating story

I just wanted it out there so someone who’d been really ill—someone like me, only a few months earlier—might read it and realize recovery is possible. Things can get better quickly. And it can be one of the most exciting times of your life.

Anyways… after Alex finished work and arrived at my “office” we’d head to Sainsbury’s and then walk up Wimbledon Hill with a backpack full of fresh food.

(I still have those stories I wrote. One for each of The 10 Principles. And every story is true.)

Stories that include disordered eating must become more mainstream

So many fridges are full of fake food

Nigel’s right.

Growing up it was bog-standard to have a big salad with dinner. (Still is!)

And whether you were at home,
a friend’s house
or a two-hour drive off the main drag at Aunt Tilda’s…

There’d be a bounty of store-bought salad dressing bottles in the middle of the table to choose from.

And the greasy labels always said: low-fat, ultra-low fat or no fat!

Soon manufacturers replaced these glass bottles with plastic—a perfect pairing, in my opinion, for the phoney ingredients inside.

fill your fridge with fresh food

Why don’t reduced-fat salad dressings help you lose weight?

Quite simply, your body is natural so it loves natural food.

As Marie Kondo would say, keep like with like.

And by fresh food I mean the kind that rots.

Here’s an easy way to remember the food that helps you lose weight

It’s the fresh stuff that’s found around the exterior of the grocery store, like fish, carrots, lettuce, cheese, milk, meat, butter, bread and so on.

Fresh stuff is always on the outside of a store

Whole foods are almost always found near a wall where they’re baked in an oven or kept in a fridge to keep them FRESH! (This pic is from my book on page 34.)

Fresh food works with your body the best

Whereas reduced-fat salad dressings and other processed factory foods are stacked on shelves in the middle of the store where they can sit for MONTHS, because they’re full of:

  • preservatives
  • artificial colors
  • fake flavors
  • artificial sweeteners
  • unnatural fat
  • salt
  • sugar

And lots of other unnatural ingredients mixed together that confuse your body!

When you eat these factory-made foods you stay hungry, crave more processed foods and eat more than you need.

(That’s why you can inhale a whole bag of florescent orange Doritos—a color that stays on your fingers for days—and still feel hungry.)

Check out the back of this store-bought salad dressing bottle:

Check out the back of this bottle of store-bought salad dressing

I have no idea what xanthan gum is.

And neither does your beautiful, super-smart body.

eat food that rots

And that’s an order.

🙂

Tell me more about these salad dressings that help you lose weight

Well, when you eat whole foods (packed with nutrients from Mother Nature) your body recognizes all the natural:

  • vitamins
  • minerals
  • fiber
  • fat
  • water
  • protein
  • & carbohydrates

So your body can use all the vitamins, etc. to nourish your body (keep your heart pumping, hair growing, etc.)

Natural food helps you reach your HAPPY weight

Because natural food hasn’t been processed in a factory your body has to do the work.

So the food takes time to break down.

Thus… energy from whole foods enters your blood stream slowly and your body can use the energy as it becomes available.

Fresh food keeps you full longer.

Whereas when you eat processed foods, they’re already, well, processed. So they enter your blood stream all at once. And overwhelm it with confusing chemicals. Then the energy is quickly stored as body fat.

You know the feeling. It’s like a sugar high and then a sugar crash. Then you crave more sugar…

When you stop eating fake food, unlocking your HAPPY weight becomes a whole lot easier (and you have waaay more energy!)

More good news about natural food

When you eat:

ROUGHLY balanced meals made MOSTLY of whole foods

You get the variety of energy and nutrients your body needs.

Then you feel full and don’t eat more than you need.

Natural food helps you fill up naturally and then you reach your H 🙂 PPY weight naturally.

Here’s what a balanced meal looks like

Aim for these proportions on your plate:

Eatwell Guide - the10principles

Just visualize the Eatwell Guide when you make your next meal out of MOSTLY whole foods.

Here’s a salad dressing that helps you lose weight

This salad dressing is made of natural food. And it’s the “oils & spreads” part of a ROUGHLY balanced meal.

I came across this recipe YEARS ago on a gossip blog (!) Then I asked the chef for permission to reprint. He said YES (yay!) So I included this salad dressing that helps you lose weight as one of the recipes found in my book.

Not only is it delicious but it’s made of one-ingredient foods.

Big thanks to the amazing catering company called Fresh Thinking. Their recipe is called Tim’s Salad Dressing.

I’ve adapted this recipe a little because you gotta be flexible when you cook! And I didn’t have all the ingredients in.

Tim’s Salad Dressing that helps you lose weight

I triple or more Tim’s recipe to make enough for about a week. It doesn’t look as pretty as the days go on but it keeps tasting better as the ingredients infuse.

An empty salsa jar (this one will be soon) is perfect to store this salad dressing that helps you lose weight!

It makes transporting your salad dressing easy, whether you’re going to a dinner party, having a picnic in the park, staying at a friend’s cottage or you’re on a boat.

An empty salsa jar (this one will be soon) is perfect to store Tim's Salad Dressing that helps you lose weight!

Simply put a dab of red nail polish at the 2/3rd cup mark. Then you never have to measure the oil again!

Simply put a dab of red nail polish at the 2/3rd cup mark. Then you never have to measure the oil again!

Here’s the ingredients for this salad dressing that helps you lose weight

Tim’s Adapted Salad Dressing
(makes enough for a few big salads)

Tim's Adapted Salad Dressing

2/3 cup of extra olive oil
1/3 cup of red wine vinegar (I used red & white vinegar plus balsamic combined to make about 2/3rds of a cup – so I sort of doubled Tim’s vinegar)
3 shallots minced (I diced a big red onion)
3 garlic cloves minced (I pressed 5 gigantic garlic cloves)
1 teaspoon of grainy mustard (I added 2 tbsps of mustard powder)
10 cherry tomatoes cut in half (I just kept putting them in until the jar was full)
fresh chopped basil (I ripped up a big handful of basil)
dash of salt & pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and you’ve got summer in a jar.

Let this salad dressing sit until you’re ready to serve.

Mix all the ingredients together and let it sit until you're ready to serve.

This dressing is so thick that I just give the jar a shake or swirl it around with a spoon and then scoop it out onto fresh romaine lettuce.

(Use any lettuce you like—I gather by now you know I’m not stuck on things being just so.)

For instance, I didn’t have grainy mu-tard, so I used this:

For instance, I didn't have grainy mu-tard, so I used this

As for basil, we planted some at the start of the summer in this purpley-ceramic pot. Alex found it in our common garbage room’s dumpster. There isn’t even a crack in it! (Please excuse the look of this end-of-season basil. It was bushy and bright green for most of the summer.)

As for basil, we planted some at the start of the summer

Make this salad dressing that helps you lose weight part of a balanced meal

Ok, so here’s a big beautiful ROUGHLY balanced meal made of MOSTLY whole foods your body loves.

here's a big beautiful ROUGHLY balanced meal made of MOSTLY whole foods your body loves

When you eat natural food you fill up naturally and reach your H 🙂 PPY weight naturally.

(You could throw in some cheese cubes to make this meal more balanced… or add some Parmesan to the mashed herb-y potatoes.)

Make Today Count

make today count - the10principlesWhat-cha eating for dinner tonight?

Is there a natural food you can add, like a few radishes or carrot sticks?

How ’bout a natural salad dressing that helps you lose weight!?

Build healthy eating and exercise habits. A healthy weight will follow.

salad dressing that helps-you lose weight - summary

Next Steps

Go to your fridge and throw out all your salad dressings that are made of fake ingredients! Then plan a ROUGHLY balanced meal made MOSTLY of whole foods you can eat for your next dinner. Look at the corn, sausage and salad dinner I put earlier in this post. If you don’t like corn, eat potatoes instead (like these French Fries). Don’t like sausage? Substitute with another protein. Not a fan of lettuce with a salad dressing that helps you lose weight (gasp!)? Include a different vegetable.

Pleeze Note!

“I’m on a boat” is a satirical song by Lonely Island that was featured on SNL (Saturday Night Live); a comedy show in the USA. So… there’s a lot of swearing. Eeeek! This is the beeped out version. Part of the charm is that Andy Samberg actually has a bit of a serious side, is married to a classically trained harpist and lives in the opulent estate Moorcrest in LA (Charlie Chaplin once lived there!) I love that he can write characters so different from his own.

It’s a ridiculous song (!) And the joke (to me anyways) is that it kinda captures the curated “look-at-me-ness” of Instagram:

“I’m at the park!”

“I’m at my cottage.”

If cursing isn’t your cup o-tea, I totally get it. And you might want to give this one a miss:

What’s your favorite salad dressing that helps you lose weight?

“Take a good, hard look…”

…at your recipe book!

And let me know it in the comments below.

Kelly Clark

 

 

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