Is salad for dinner good for weight loss?
It works if the salad is built like the dinner it replaces, with your protein line, a starch or beans, and a spoon of oil. A salad of greens, salmon, quinoa and olive oil is about 470 calories with 32 g of protein and grades A. A bowl of leaves with dressing is a side dish, about 210 calories and 6 g of protein, and it won’t hold you until bed.
Having “just a salad” for dinner usually means cutting the parts of dinner that keep you full. The plate loses its protein and its starch, keeps the lettuce and gains a lot of dressing, so the calories drop along with the protein and the fiber.
What we’d do
Keep the dinner and change its shape. Put the protein you’d have had on the plate on a big bed of greens, add the starch or beans in a smaller amount, and use one tablespoon of olive oil with vinegar. Or have a big, light salad first and a smaller main after it. Both are good ways to eat less at dinner without going to bed hungry.
A dinner salad is dinner rearranged. The same parts are there, with more vegetables and less of the rest.
Three dinner salads
| Bowl | Calories | Protein | Fiber | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 cups romaine, a palm of salmon (3 oz), half a cup of quinoa, a tomato, half a cup of cucumber, a tablespoon of olive oil with vinegar | 473 | 32 g | 7.4 g | A |
| 3 cups romaine, a palm of steak (3 oz), a baked sweet potato, a tomato, a tablespoon of olive oil with vinegar | 487 | 33 g | 8.8 g | A |
| 4 cups romaine, a tomato, a cup of cucumber, 2 tablespoons of bottled Italian | 210 | 6 g | 6.2 g | C |
Graded in our bowl builder on the six meters Gyroscope grades a meal on, for a 170 lb person eating 2,000 calories over three meals. The first two clear all six, and half a cup of black beans would make either an A+. The last one misses Energy, Processing, Muscle and Hunger, and the one change the builder suggests is a palm of chicken.
Why the protein and the volume both help
A 2015 review of the protein research found that people felt fuller after higher-protein meals, at about 25 to 30 g a meal or more. In a year-long Penn State trial, 97 women with obesity who were told to eat more water-rich food like vegetables, on top of less fat, lost 17.4 lb (7.9 kg) against 14.1 lb (6.4 kg) for the group told only to cut fat, and said they were less hungry. A dinner salad built right does both at once, with real protein and a lot of food by volume.
Or have the salad first
If you’d rather keep your usual dinner, start with a big, light salad. At Penn State, 42 women ate a salad they had to finish before a pasta lunch. A large salad of leaves and vegetables with a light dressing (about 100 calories in 300 g) cut the whole meal by 12%. The same size bowl made rich with cheese and creamier dressing raised it by 17%. Those were single lunches in a lab, but the direction is clear enough to try.
The starter or meal calculator shows where your salad sits against the trial’s bowls. For how salad fits weight loss overall, see is salad good for weight loss, and for your calorie target, tdee.guide.
4 sources
- Gebhardt and Thomas, Nutritive Value of Foods, Home and Garden Bulletin 72, USDA Agricultural Research Service, 2002ars.usda.gov
- Rolls, Roe and Meengs, Salad and satiety: energy density and portion size of a first-course salad affect energy intake at lunch, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 2004pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Ello-Martin et al., Dietary energy density in the treatment of obesity: a year-long trial comparing 2 weight-loss diets, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2007pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Leidy et al., The role of protein in weight loss and maintenance, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2015pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
