How Salad Changed My Life

Controversial opinion: The best summer food is salad.

If I met a genie who granted me the opportunity to eat one food for the rest of my life, I'd choose salad. Why? Because ANYTHING can be a salad if you play your cards right. I learned this the hard way, so let me explain:

When I was diagnosed with Graves' Disease, I honestly thought my life was over. For those not in the know, Graves' Disease is an autoimmune disorder of the thyroid. Mine was overactive and on the warpath. Your thyroid controls your endocrine system, and when overactive, it can cause anxiety and depression, tremors, and an inability to control your body temperature, which made summers generally sweaty and terrible.

The day of my diagnosis, the doctors told me I had to immediately make the switch to eating low-carb. This was not just as a way to lose weight quickly and temporarily, but something I had to do for the rest of my life to get and keep my disease in remission.

It was either that, or have surgery to remove half my thyroid. I picked the low-carb route.

It was probably one of the harder things I've ever done, because food was always a comfort to me. I love pasta. I love bread. I love rice, and baked goods, and cereal. Oh, my sweet love, pizza! I lamented its loss daily. It took me a long time to make the switch to low-carb, because I simply didn't want to give up those easy, tasty enriched-wheat products.

The one thing that made this lifestyle change the easiest?

SALAD!

But I don't mean any kind of salad. If you're picturing a woman laughing weirdly at her fork full of limp iceberg lettuce, ranch dressing, and a crumbly hard boiled egg, let me just say: we don't do that at this house.

I love to have a huge bowl of of spinach salad with fresh strawberries and sliced almonds. Every day can be romaine day with Caesar dressing, plump tomatoes, Parmesan and lemon. I daydream of cold arugula doused in raspberry vinaigrette and adorned with blood orange slices and edible flowers.

But why stop there?

Egg salad? You bet. Chicken salad? Delicious! Potato salad? Okay, maybe a couple extra carbs won't hurt. And hey, be honest, what is a smoothie, really, but a blended fruit salad?

The possibilities are endless. Take a little loose-leaf and mix it up with ground beef and all the fixings. BAM! You've got yourself a burger salad.

Who says you can't chop up the fixings for pizza and toss it in a bowl? Microwave it, eat it with a fork, and I dare you to say it's not gourmet a la mode.

Maybe it's very American to say that, but I'm only half-joking. This is the melting pot of the world - or the salad bowl of the continent. What's beautiful about this food group is that it's truly universal. There's a type of salad from any culture you can imagine, or at least one inspired by them.

Taco salad is my go-to at every Mexican restaurant. What about mixing corn, black beans, peppers, jalapenos, and tomato salsa? Easy salad!

Give me chickpeas, quinoa, and feta cheese any day of the week. A Mediterranean style diet is excellent for my autoimmune disease.

And come on - have you ever had an egg roll in a bowl? Iconic!

I love salad because it gives me the opportunity to still eat my favorite foods without hurting my body. And, now that my disease is in remission, the doctors gave me the go-ahead to start adding a few more heavier-carbohydrate foods back into my diet.

Mac and Cheese was at the top of the list... but only as a pasta salad.

So let me put you onto a recipe for the mac-and-cheese lovers out there who, like me, have to balance their blood sugar and carbohydrate intake: mix riced cauliflower, cooked mac and cheese, chicken, hot sauce and bleu cheese. It'll change your life, I promise!