Question about fruits and veggies

I'm craving salad so bad. Can we eat salad? Does it cause tummy problems? How do you incorporate fruits and veggies into your diet? Can we drink fruit and veggie smoothies with protein? Thanks in advance!!!

Yes, what I wouldnt give for a nice salad....mmmmm.  I did make some homemade hidden valley ranch dressing, and I have been dipping my meat in it....salami, and steak...   Just an idea, yeah I know its not a salad, but tasting that dressing did help my salad craving a bit....lol

How far out are you?

Salad should wait til about month 4-6..depending on your healing. What you do is start extremely basic...a wee bit of iceberg lettuce with FULL FAT dressing. If that does well...then 3 or so days later add tomato or mushroom but NOT both...you add one item at a time til you have your favorite salad. Took me about 2 months of weekly salads to get where I wanted to be but I did it.

As to veggies, I tend to stay really simple. And I cook mine in butter. If I have broccoli or cauliflower, I make a "hollandaise" type sauce of 1 cup mayo and 1 stick of butter and add that as a topping. But that, green beans cooked with bacon grease or mushrooms sauted in butter is about all I do now...

I'm 5 weeks 2 days out.

It would be helpful to know how far out you are.  Also, be careful with iceberg lettuce.  Early out, it caused me very painful digestion.  I'm not a big fan of that type of lettuce anyway, so that was no big deal.  I opt for more dark leafy greens.  Further out, veggies are pretty much endless paired with fat and protein.  I shy away from fruits, they are loaded with carbs.  I'm currently keeping my carbs to under 20 grams a day to try and kick off some regain.  One banana has 20+ grams of carbs.  I found this out because I'd been adding it as a sweetener to my unflavored protein isolate smoothies and my weight wasn't budging.  At this point, fruits just aren't worth it to me.  Perhaps once I get into my maintenance mode again, I'll have them more as a treat. 

I suggest iceberg as it is the least annoying and is less roughage than the good stuff. Some of the better lettuces can also cause issues early on.

I was almost 6 weeks into my experiment before I switched to good lettuce.

But then before I even started adding salads, I had had iceberg as a "bun" for my hamburger.

 

I agree, early out, a lot of things can cause some issues and it's best to go slow.  Also, I guess it depends on one's perspective, but I find iceberg very annoying and too much roughage!  It really doesn't have any nutritional value and is tasteless.  

I still don't know how early out the OP is.  I was a few months out before I tried any roughage.  There were posts on the DS forum several years ago about iceberg and it being more fibrous and harder to digest versus butter lettuce, romaine, green leaf, etc,.  I remember reading those posts and finally understanding why I had major abdominal pains after eating iceberg.  It still does it to me 4 plus years out, but the other, more tender types of lettuce are just fine.  I guess it's a "your mileage will vary" type of thing, but I just wanted to warn about iceberg and the horrendous bloating and cramping that hits a lot of us after eating it.  My husband follows a paleo/keto diet and we use tender lettuce as a vehicle for many different proteins, bun, tortilla, etc. 

Very true...but many think of lettuces like Romaine, Escarole, Chicory when doing salads...so the idea is a MILD flavored lettuce to begin with and many can handle iceberg...many can't...so it really is a YMMV. I use the iceberg as an example for MILD flavored lettuce.

I was about 4 months out before I started with lettuce/other roughage. I wanted to give my guts time to heal. :)

I ate salads around 4 months, but they were always small, and had chicken on them. At 1 1/2 years out, I dont recall eating a single salad WITHOUT a protein source on it. Eggs, cheese, chicken, ham, etc are good additions. I never realized how much I had missed a good salad until I ate my first one.

Even today, I don't eat vegetables just by themselves. My new favorite which I have enjoyed about four times a week, is pan fried chicken with red/yellow/orange peppers and vidalia onions. Today I had ckn with snowpeas. As much as I love those veggies, I would not eat them alone.

I enjoy fruit now, but didn't eat it in any speakable volumes until maybe a year out. I haven't heard much about fruit and veggie smoothies with protein. Fruit and veggies are good carb choices as opposed to white sugar, but hold out for a while.

From your posts it sounds like you are getting pretty bored with your food. In my younger days, I always found a good project (like making a quilt) helped keep my mind off food. It didn't keep me thin, but it was a good short term solution during my food obsession periods of my life!

I started craving a salad early on also.  I had a salad at 5 months.  No problem with any thing.  Tiny grape tomatoes, spring mix for lettuce (I do use Iceberg for my bun substitute), Zuc and carrots.  I had a great time with it and no problems digesting it.  I ate about 3/4 of a cup worth of salad.

Woke up at 3:30 am running to the bathroom and spent the rest of the night camped out on my porcelain bed...  Start out small, and add just a bit each time.  I think there is more roughage in raw veggies than cooked veggies.