30-Day Salad Swap Challenge!

Yesterday as I was freshening up an old blog post, I happened to notice that the photo of me a year ago is looking a lot slimmer than the photos of me now. Unfortunately, as often happens, the stresses of life can make it easy to reach for fast frozen dinners and cheap junk food in place of a healthy home-cooked meal or a dish full of fresh veggies.

Today when I logged into my MomsMeet account (a site for moms to get coupons and information on their favorite organic or natural foods) I saw that I had a Fresh Express Salad Challenge sitting in my quest-log. (Yeah, that's right, MomsMeet does quests!)

Of course, being the avid quester that I am (haha) I had to take it! In actuality, I feel I 'have to' take it because I've just not been able to shake those last twenty pounds I put on while I was pregnant with my daughter. One of my worst problems when trying to get healthy is holding myself accountable. Luckily, there is a pretty easy solution for that!

Research (and indeed, even shows like The Biggest Loser) has shown that telling the community-at-large about your goals to lose weight and how you plan to lose it has a tremendous impact in sticking to a diet or exercise program.

So here's my announcement: I'm going to try and lose the first 10 lbs by the end of this month. And I'm going to do it by eating a salad everyday in place of a regular meal.

To make my goal fun, Fresh Express has a nifty little online app that allows me to see my calorie count, how much weight I've lost, how many salads I've eaten, and how many salads I have left to go! I'm going to be using this app for the next 30 days, and to reward me, Fresh Express will give me coupons for their salad as I 'check in' the codes on their salad bags into my online profile! (How cool is that?!)

Another pretty cool feature is their 'salad swap' chart. You pick what you want to eat (and oh how I really, really want that bacon cheeseburger that is pictured below!) and they will turn it into a salad for you, resulting in far less calorie consumption.

As for me, I'm going to be using a lot of Pinterest-salad-ideas to fill in when I don't see a salad-swap suggestion that does it for me. I adore Pinterest when it comes to finding recipes, and I can already see my new 'I <3 Salad' board getting a lot of use in the near future.

Disclosure: I received no compensation for this post, and as always, my opinions are purely my own.