my current favorite salad.

It's okay, you can tease me.  My husband does.  My Mexican, junk food-loving friend does.  I used to make fun of "salad girls" myself.  You know the ones....you're at the best burger joint in the nation and it comes their turn to order and it's, "Um, I'll have a Caesar salad, please."  Gimme a break!  Live a little, right?!

Okay, well, I'm not that bad.  I'll never pass on a good burger.  I enjoy dessert almost every time I have the opportunity.  My motto on eating is "everything in moderation".  Do I drink straight Coke all day?  No.  Do I eat celery my whole life and never have any fun.  No way!  I try to eat a little healthier at home so I can always live it up, guilt-free when I'm out to eat or hanging with friends.

However, over the last year I have been making small changes in my lifestyle.  My biggest motivation started as just wanting to have more energy for my kids and to be able to do any activities that come our way without being out of breath...or sore. I want to stay able-bodied and active so I can have fun with my kids.  So for a full year now I've been working out 4-5 days a week and will never look back.  I truly love working out and hate when I have to miss a day.  My energy is much better and I just feel like my spirits are up.  On days I don't get to the gym I definitely feel slower and less motivated and just "down".

At first, when I started working out I craved a lot of junk food.  I think that from burning so many calories my body was ravenous for anything.  But, for awhile now I've craved more nutritious food.  I feel like once my body got in to gear and realized that this workout thing is the new normal it really needed the right nutrition to be able to keep up.

So my first big change was the daily workouts (I say "daily" cause that the way I end up doing it 4-5x/week.  If I tried for 4-5x/week I'd end up working out 2x/week, you know how it goes, so I just tell myself it's "everyday" :)).  The next big change was about six months ago when I started eating a huge, hearty salad every day (yes, 4-5 days/week) for lunch.  This is where my everything in moderation motto comes in. :)  Yes, I eat a salad everyday.....and I also eat cheesy fries from my favorite local pub, burgers, pizza, yes!  I'm not a total calorie-counting freak, I just eat my salad every day so that I get lots of good veggies and have more freedom to eat other things.  I typically stay stocked up on baby spinach and every kind of veggie from Costco.  I always put avocado and turkey and nuts on my salads too.  I'm not a skimpy eater, I need this to be HEARTY, with lots of healthy fats and protein. And I keep several all-natural ingredient dressings on hand (love Brianna's).

After eating hundreds of basically the same salad....I started to get bored.  So I've been looking into new salad recipes to change things up.  Loooong story, short?  I thought I'd share my recent salad love:

Beet and Goat Cheese Salad


Baby spinach
Raw asparagus stems, cut into bite-size pieces
Raw beets, peeled and sliced
Chopped pecans
Goat cheese, crumbled
Red grapes, sliced

Top with Brianna's Blush Wine Vinaigrette dressing

Scarf that baby down.  If you're like me, that won't hold you off til dinner, so I'll metabolize with a healthy afternoon snack like yogurt or fruit.  Then comes dinner.  Then, if I'm lucky, the hubs brings home some chocolate cake balls for a late night treat.  Could life get any better?!?!?