EATING SALAD EVERYDAY (My Love/Hate Relationship With Salad)
I’ve always hated salads with a passion. The cold sloppy-tasting grass makes me angry to consider eating at all, let alone every day. Little did I know, most people (including me) don’t know what a great-tasting salad tastes like.
I was in for some schooling.

How could people choose a salad when there’s so many amazing things on the menu.
Fast forward to early 2016 in Bali Indonesia.
I’m in Ubud, arguably the best place in the world for healthy eating.
I look around at people choosing to eat salad and genuinely enjoying it. I appreciated their penchant for healthy eating but couldn’t fathom how to do it myself.
I never learnt healthy eating habits growing up so as an adult, the moment my wallet grew fatter, so did my waistline.
Nowadays as a nomad living anywhere in the world, one of the first things I understood is that every place eventually gets to you. Ubud was no exception. Watching everyone else eat well and not feeling motivated to eat healthy myself started getting to me.
If I couldn’t love eating healthy here, then I’ll never be able to learn.
But there was a problem. I had done the yo-yo ‘killing myself’ dieting before and I was never going to do that again.
I wanted to figure out how to love the food I was eating.
I refuse to do it just because it’s good for me. I’d never keep it up that way. Food is an irreplaceable part of my life and I could not eat anything long-term that I did not enjoy.
And so I thought I’d make a deal with myself that the next meal I would order would be a salad.
The Everyday Salad That Schooled Me (aka The Gateway Salad)
No part of me was excited about ordering a salad but I wanted to see what great salad even looked like. I actually had no idea. I fully expected to hate it.
When it finally came, this is what it looked like (from Watercress in Ubud):
To my surprise, it actually looked decent. And tasted good. It was warm. I didn’t hate it. It hit the ‘warm fuzzy feeling’ spot I expect good meals to hit.
It was nothing like the salads I had ever known.
Hmm…
I walked away feeling schooled. I had made a good decision with food and I didn’t have to sacrifice taste for it.
How interesting…
I went home and waited for the normal bloated feeling I get after most meals. It didn’t come.
That felt even better.
My Deal With Myself To Try To Lose Weight With Salad

Not Killing Myself On Eating Salad Every Meal
It really felt great to love eating well.

But I figure as long as I tip the scales of eating well most of the time, it’ll add up to me being healthy without killing myself.
As a loose idea, I figure 5 days a week I eat salad and weekends I eat whatever I like. This way I get enough variation and I still enjoy what I’m doing.
Being More Aware Of My Body After Eating Salad For Only A Month
Eating Good Salad – Everyday Salad Recipes
Since I’ve moved away from Bali, I’ve realised how rare good salad is. This has motivated me to cook at home (something I’ve had no interest in before).
Here are some recipes I’ve thrown together to try. I’ll add more recipes here as I experiment more.
Dee’s Original Warm Salad
(for one)
Time: 15 minutes [Using Time Saver Below: 5 minutes]
Ingredients:
Handful of washed lettuce
Coconut oil (any other type of cooking oil will do)
1/2 onion chopped
1/2 bell peppers chopped
1/2 tomato chopped
3 eggs
Salt, pepper, lemon (to taste)
- Line your salad at the bottom of your eating bowl
- Heat up oil in pan on stove
- Throw in onion, bell peppers, tomato with salt and pepper
- Once cooked, add it on top of the salad in your bowl
- Using the same pan, throw cook 3 eggs with some salt and pepper
- Add it on top of the bowl. Top with lemon.
I eat this for lunch every day.
Time Saver: I pre-cook the onion, bell peppers, tomato with salt and pepper altogether at the beginning of the week to cut down my cooking time to 5 minutes during the week. I store it in a plastic container in the fridge and it lasts up to 7 days.
Dee’s Haloumi Pumpkin Salad
This salad is my attempt to recreate my favourite salad from Kismet in Bali, Indonesia. I did a great job I think.
(for one)
Time: 25 minutes [Using Time Saver Below: 7 minutes]
Ingredients:
Handful of washed lettuce
Coconut oil (any other type of cooking oil will do)
1/2 large red onions
3 strips of haloumi cheese
A handful of pumpkin
1/2 avocado
Salt, pepper, lemon (to taste)
- Fill large pan with water, throw in pumpkin in big chunks and bring to boil until pumpkin is soft.
- Line your salad at the bottom of your eating bowl.
- Heat up oil in pan on stove.
- Throw in onions, salt and pepper. Cook until soft, then add on top of salad in bowl.
- Throw in strips of haloumi on pan. Just enough to brown lightly. Throw on in bowl.
- Add a bit of oil and throw in handful of boiled pumpkin. Cook until a little brown.
- Throw 1/2 avocado on top and drizzle a little lemon.
Time Saver: I pre-cook the onion and boil the pumpkin at the beginning of the week to cut down my cooking time to 7 minutes during the week. I store it in a plastic container in the fridge and it lasts up to 7 days.