I did an experiment: I ate at Just Salad 5x a week for 3 weeks. During the first week, I tried different salads for lunch. For the latter two weeks, I ate a Crispy Chicken Poblano, but asked for kale as my base. Although the recipe is made with a majority of romaine as the base, I always ask for all kale because of the nutritional benefits. I also noticed the kale is a lot heavier than the other salad bases, which explains why it keeps me full for like 8 hours.
Kale has 2.9 grams of protein per cup and 134% of your daily value for calcium amongst other benefits! Eating this superfood 5x a week combined with my training at Orange Theory (also 5x per week) for 3 straight weeks led to my best In Body weigh in so far! If you don't know, the In Body scale is a special scale that sends small electrical currents (you can't feel it) through your body to calculate your body composition.
Between my August 27th weigh in and my September 22nd weigh in (which is the timeframe I conducted my experiment) I was able to gain 3.5 lbs of skeletal muscle mass and lose 1.9% of my body fat. I went from 41.1lbs of body fat mass to 37.8lbs in body fat mass, which means I lost 3.3lbs of fat. I attached screenshots of my weigh ins as proof of what Just Salad was able to do to my body when combined with great physical activity.
I'd like to mention that all my weigh ins are done before 7 am and prior to having coffee (coffee consumption prior to weigh in is not advised). Since joining OTF in February 2021, my gym visits averaged 5x a week, every week. My first weigh in was in March. In my March weigh in, I was 32% body fat and 56.9lbs of skeletal muscle mass.
Between my first weigh in and my most recent, I've lost a whopping 10.8lbs of body fat mass and gained 5.9lbs of skeletal muscle mass. If you remember the numbers I mentioned above, you'll notice that more than half of my muscle gains happened between my last two weigh ins. I'm quite certain it's all because of the cups and cups of protein filled kale I've eaten. I attribute my success in losing 3.3lbs of my body fat to OTF because during the time I conducted my experiment, they had implemented full hour of workouts again (due to covid, it was reduced to 45 mins for a long time). The full hour class makes the cardio portion much harder, which means my heart rate stays elevated for much longer. After so much time with an elevated heart rate, my body begins to burn calories even after the workout is complete.
Aside for salads and 15min longer gym sessions, nothing else about my lifestyle changed in those 3 weeks. In those 3 weeks, I continued to eat handsomely outside of my Just Salad meals. I never went hungry to achieve these results in my experiment. I also don't take protein supplements. read more