Eating out on a diet is a huge challenge. Restaurant food is generally loaded with fat and sugar – all restaurants care about is the taste of the food, not the nutrition. It is also very hard to control yourself while eating out on a diet when you are faced with so many tempting food choices. Plus huge portion sizes certainly don’t help with your diet!
If you are on a diet, it’s best to avoid eating out at restaurants as much as you can. Eating out can really sabotage your diet, no matter how careful you are. However, I know it’s not possible to completely avoid eating out on a diet. You can’t just drop your social life – eating out at restaurants for occasions like lunches with friends and birthday parties is impossible to avoid.
Follow my rules for eating out at restaurants to minimize the damage they can cause to your diet:
Eating Out On A Diet RULE #1: Don’t Arrive Hungry
Eat a healthy snack to curb your hunger before you head out to a restaurant. If you are still very hungry, eat another snack. Don’t ever go to a restaurant if you are too hungry!
If you are starving while being seated at the restaurant, you will order and eat driven by your body’s primitive instincts, not by your brain. You’ll just gobble up the whole huge fattening portion that’s in front of you, and here goes the diet out of the window.
If you are not too hungry at a restaurant, you’ll be more rational about what to order on your diet and you’ll eat less. That’s why not arriving hungry is the most important rule of eating out on a diet.
Eating Out On A Diet RULE #2: Order Healthy Menu Choices
The most foolproof option for eating out on a diet is to order grilled chicken or fish with a side of veggies. Skip the sauce – butter-based sauce or gravy can make otherwise lean meat into something fatty.
Main dish salads are also good, as long as they have light dressing (or dressing on the side). Most dieters automatically order salads, but give little thought to what’s in that salad. Too much of the fatty dressing can make the salad have more calories than a cheeseburger! With the salads, make sure they don’t contain bacon, too much cheese and are not swimming in dressing.
Avoid menu items labeled “crispy”, “battered” or “breaded” – that always means “deep-fried”! Don’t order pasta dishes, as they are always huge and contain lots of cheese and heavy sauces.
Eating Out On A Diet RULE #3: Don’t Drink Your Calories
A large coke has 300 calories, and that amount can double or triple if you get refills! Finding healthy food in restaurants is difficult enough… don’t ruin your diet because of a DRINK!
Always get zero calorie drinks at restaurants (and at home). You can get tap water, sparkling water or unsweetened ice tea. Freshly brewed ice tea is my favorite – it’s so tasty and has no calories.
Eating Out On A Diet RULE #4: Ask For A Doggy Bag
The restaurant portions are usually huge. At a restaurant, you’ll often be served twice the amount of food of what you’d normally eat. Don’t eat it all just because it’s on your plate!
When the food is brought to you, decide on how much of it you will eat and separate it on your plate right away. For example, if you know you’ll eat just half of the fish, cut off what you are planning to save for later and push it to the side of the plate. This way the food is clearly separated, so you’ll no not to keep eating it and eating it until it’s all gone.
Ask for a doggy bag to take your leftovers home. This way you won’t overeat and you won’t have to cook the next day!
Eating Out On A Diet RULE #5: Skip Or Go Easy On Dessert
Those huge slices of cake can be as much as 1,000 calories! It’s best to skip dessert altogether when eating out on a diet. However, if you really feel bad not having dessert, make sure you don’t eat it all. Eat a small piece of dessert – the smaller the better.
If the whole piece of cake ends up on your plate, chances are you won’t be able to resist and will just eat it all. That’s why it’s important to only get as much dessert on your plate as you are planning to eat. There are 2 ways to do it: one way is to ask the waiter to just bring you half of the dessert (even if it costs just as much as the whole), and another way is to split the dessert with someone else.
If you follow these rules for eating out on a diet, you will not sabotage your diet and will stay on track with your weight loss.