Alarmed by his growing weight and the toll it was taking on his health, Tom Carroll lost 132 pounds in a unique way: eating a Chick-fil-A salad every day.
He’s been following that routine for more than a year, always ordering the restaurant’s Spicy Southwest Salad for lunch — his big meal of the day — then making a homemade version of it for dinner.
Carroll, 32, says he’s not bored eating the same thing every day — a strategy dietitians say can have important advantages — noting he just really likes the taste.
The 680-calorie salad contains mixed greens, tomatoes, roasted corn, black beans, chiles, red bell peppers, cheese, grilled chicken, and comes with tortilla strips, pepitas and a creamy salsa dressing.
“I was really lucky that I found the thing that works for me,” Carroll, who lives in Lincoln, Rhode Island, tells TODAY.com. “There are a lot of Spicy Southwest Salads in my life, but I’m more than happy to stay on that path.”
Tom Carroll before and after losing 132 pounds by eating a Chick-Fil-A salad every day for lunch for a year, plus giving up alcohol and making other changes. Courtesy Tom Carroll
Carroll says he’s not paid by Chick-fil-A and no one from the company has contacted him, other than the manager of his local restaurant who gifted him a salad after reading the essay Carroll wrote about his weight loss journey, titled “Chick-fil-A Saved My Life.”
But there’s no magic ingredient in Chick-fil-A per se, says Lisa Young, Ph.D., a registered dietitian and adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University. She’s the author of “Finally Full, Finally Slim.”
“What he was eating before was a disaster,” Young tells TODAY.com. “He made a change by choosing a much healthier option than he had been eating previously.”
Shocked by weight gain
Carroll says he was always a big kid, with an “element of obesity in my DNA,” and just kept gaining weight in school and as an adult.
He loved salty, cheesy foods, like pizza, hot dogs, fast food and potato chips, washing it down with sugary soda or sports drinks.
As a digital content producer for a Boston sports radio station, Carroll sometimes works odd hours, so he’d reach for quick, unhealthy meals to fuel his body.
He didn’t weigh himself for years — an aversion to the scale left over from his childhood days when nurses and doctors would make comments about his weight.
So Carroll was shocked when he discovered he weighed 360 pounds in July 2023 — his highest recorded weight. At 6 feet, 2 inches tall, he says he felt heavy and “terrible.”
“It was awful,” Carroll says. “Going up and down stairs was an issue. … Sitting on an airplane and getting a seat belt put on was an absolute challenge. Finding clothes that fit and feeling good when you dress up wasn’t fun.”
Carroll and his wife, Morgan. He weighed 360 pounds at his heaviest. Courtesy Tom Carroll
He had high blood pressure as a teen and was prescribed medication, but stopped taking it as an adult.
Carroll was frightened by occasional chest pain that culminated in a visit to the emergency room, where doctors told him he’d had a “cardiac event,” though not a heart attack.
Weight loss success
Carroll was determined to lose weight. The first step was to stop drinking beer and other alcohol, which he mainly drank on weekends.
“After having a bunch of drinks at the end of the night, it always made me want to eat poorly, so I would order pizza and eat the whole pizza,” Carroll recalls.
In late 2023, he started to eat Chick-fil-A’s Spicy Southwest Salad every day for lunch, an option that “felt like a real treat while also being healthy,” he wrote in his essay.
He either skipped breakfast or ate a light morning meal of yogurt and fruit. Dinner was a homemade version of the salad, with store-bought greens and vegetables plus chicken he prepared himself.
He stopped drinking soda and sports drinks, hydrating with water and flavored seltzer only.
Carroll poses with Silvia, an employee at his Chick-fil-A location. He says the restaurant staff became a support system for him as he came by every day to order the salad. Courtesy Tom Carroll
After a year of this routine, Carroll weighed 228 pounds, losing 132 pounds in all. He also joined a gym and started exercising. He's been able to maintain that weight and has a healthy blood pressure with the help of medication.
Carroll still eats the salad every day for lunch, though his dinner sometimes changes.
"It's fun. I really enjoy it," Carroll says. "Once you find your routine, it's the thing that you can always go back to. You can tell yourself, 'Yes, I had a cheat meal, but it's OK because tomorrow I'm going to snap back into the thing that I know works for me and get back on my path.'''
Carroll and his wife share a happy moment after his weight loss. Courtesy Tom Carroll
Dietitian’s take
Young likes the salad’s ingredients and notes that it contains a “good amount of protein,” 33 grams, which helps people feel full.
But she was concerned by the high salt content, 1,570 milligrams of sodium. She recommended getting the salad dressing on the side and cutting back on the cheese to consume less saturated fat.
“This particular salad had a lot of variety in it, so he’s getting a lot of different nutrients,” Young says.
“He did not feel deprived and that worked in his favor. ... It didn’t have to be a Chick-fil-A salad, (but) it had a fun foods for him, and it was a routine that he was able to stay in.”
Eating the same meal every day can have advantages like having control over the number of calories consumed, consistency and being “on autopilot,” Young says.
Giving up alcohol is also an important step for weight loss since alcohol contains calories and leads to overeating because it makes people less inhibited, she adds.
Eating an almost 700-calorie salad may not help everyone lose weight, but it worked for Carroll since he was so heavy initially, and the salad had fewer calories and fat than he was eating before, Young notes.
“He liked it — that’s a very big part about keeping up with something,” she says.
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