“The Ridiculously Big Salad” — My “Secret” To Losing 140 Pounds (Keto, Low Carb, Intermittent Fasting)

Seriously, this salad is my big “secret” to my 140-pound weight loss. (It’s hardly a secret if you tell everyone about it…)

I’ve been promoting “the big salad” for months now that we’ve almost become a salad cult in the Eat Like A Bear! group on Facebook (here). I have videos all over the place on it and it’s gotten out of control directing everyone to all of them and so, here is your big list, as least as far as I can find and gather them to date.

First, “the big salad” got its name from the YouTube video below. Increasingly, I am calling it “The Ridiculously Big Salad,” because that really how big it is.

I am half my size — down from 280 to 140 pounds — from low carb, ketogenic meals that I eat only once a day (in one hour). Some of those meals are not salads at all. I discuss my different intermittent fasting meal ideas (here). For fundamentals on what I’ve done, here you go:

• I eat one low carb meal a day. Read about how I think about the food choices here (keto foods for weight loss).
• I eat that meal in one hour or less. Read more about intermittent fasting for weight loss (here) and my intermittent fasting results (here, with my strong plea for you to try this part even though it sounds stupid.)
• You can buy a ten buck e-book here to distill all of what I did into a digestible package. (Read about that here.)

In The Big Salad video on YouTube, I argue that of all of the “meal types” I’ve played around with in this time of weight loss, “the ridiculously big salad” was my single-biggest tool. I entered the diet with no specific program in mind, directed by no “guru” at all. (I was jaded and thought pretty much all weight loss advice was stupid.) I do not even remember why I started eating the salads. I had never before eaten salads of this size or with this purpose in mind. I just went for it. It worked. I kept doing what was working. Now in maintenance, I find that I am not satisfied with my meals if I am not eating The Big Salad most days. I expect I eat them more than 2/3 of my days. In maintenance, I eat in five hours on some days instead of one, typically The Big Salad plus some other entree.

In the video below I speculate about why I think it works, with a focus on the bulk fiber and abundant micro-nutrients in a foundation of very few calories. The calories in my meals come primarily from homemade salad dressing (see recipes below) and the protein item on top of the salad.

All of these discussions on Facebook Live, sent me into my kitchen to work on a simple “recipe book” about “The Ridiculously Big Salad,” and in the process, I realized that my salads really do follow a very specific framework, even though I was just tossing stuff in bowls and losing weight. Far more than a recipe collection, I ended up writing an e-book that provides the salad framework and a 6-week meal plan of Ridiculously Big Salads, along with shopping lists. You can grab that here.

Does The Big Salad Take Too Much Time?

This can be fast food, folks!

I did this video LIVE on Facebook — a salad in five minutes. (Follow my LIVE videos via Facebook’s notification option that will hopefully pop up in the video below.)

Here are two dressings in 5 minutes with a challenge to you salad-haters! (Here too, follow my LIVE videos via Facebook’s notification option that will hopefully pop up in the video below.)

Here are some of the recipes on this site:

• Keto Ranch Dressing
• Keto Coleslaw Dressing
• Big Mac Salad
• Poppy Seed Dressing

I need to post some more dressings!