Dining Out On A Diet
Well I can tell you that dinning out can be a real diet disaster. It happened to me so many times that I can’t even keep count. It’s virtually impossible not to go over the proposed calories for one meal. And when you think about it, will you really give up on something everyone else is having and instead choose boiled potatoes and lettuce salad? It’s highly unlikely to eat something healthy in a restaurant, even if at home you would feel able to eat the very same thing and will not feel disadvantaged in any way if you do so. But dinning out is much more complex, it is not only about the food, but it can become only about the food when you have to focus on NOT eating.
My regular going out night is something like this: my friends choose a restaurant and I go along with the choice. My main problem each time is that I end up going to places in which I have no idea what they will be serving, so I can’t plan ahead the things I’m going to eat. For example, one time I went to an Italian restaurant, and I had no idea what so ever about the Mediterranean diet they cook by in Italy.
I was of course tempted to choose the grilled fish, but then I saw it’s served with fires, which weren’t a good choice. Mushrooms were another choice, but they are usually too well fried in olive oil. It’s very hard to find an aliment that is not overcooked and not filled with various sauces. If I were just an occasional dining out guy, then I could’ve eating almost anything, pasta or other meals, because a one time mistake doesn’t count that much.
But since I am a frequent dinning out person, I was in desperate need of tips for dinning out on a diet. The first important thing is to be very careful when you choose a meal. There’s no point in choosing something that you can not eat later, when it’s served, because you realize that food is full of fats and carbs.
A woman in my office told be that one of the best tips for dining out on a diet that she could give me is to eat in a Japanese, Thailand or Vietnamese restaurant because these restaurants server coconut milk which is very high in saturated fats.
One of the common sense tips for dining out on a diet is the fact that the menu is telling you subtlety what to choose. If you see names like crispy, fried, burnt and such then it’s clearly that those foods are too cooked and also fried in oil. I had to start building up courage and ask for things I wished, even if they were not on the menu. Most restaurants will not turn away clients just because they want to eat a combined or alternative meal. In fact, the pricier the restaurant is, the more likely you are to get the exact meal you specify. Keep in mind that cheap places will use rather unhealthy ingredients, so in those places even a meat free salad can have way to many calories or carbs because the oil used is not of good quality and the vegetables are surely make in synthetic environments. If you are pro bio food, those are not places to choose when dinning out on a diet.
As I was saying, one of the best tips for dining out on a diet proved to be the one encouraging me to ask for what I want to eat. This way, there’s no embarrassing conversation with the waiter, while you are trying to discover all the ingredients used for a certain meal course, there’s no counting calories and no unpleasant surprises when you finally get your plate. If you ask the exact thing you are used to eat at home while dieting, then you will know what to expect and the more information you give about the way you want your food prepared the better it is.
I usually replace fried fish with barbecued fish, French fries with salad. If I eat pizza I tell them specifically not to add the cheese blend or add just a bit of it and instead add more vegetables. Or in case of a salad, I choose to remove the croutons for it, and add some more tomatoes or lettuce leaves.
It’s obvious that respectful restaurant will gladly accept your changes to their menu. Another one of the important tips for dinning out on a diet is the one that should make us aware of the so-called vegetarian foods served in restaurants that are no that vegetarian after all. It can contain various fried ingredients as croutons, and also other ingredients that are not so health after all.
A thing that I will never understand is the rice served with salads. An on op of the fact that they ruin a perfectly diet-fit food, they over-boil the rice, and make it loose all its properties. Rice should be served somewhere between raw and boiled, so not when it’s all smooth and soft.
As far as bread goes, I try ordering cereal bread instead of the standard white bread. Plain water with lemon is the best thing to eat after meals, because it helps digestion. If the foods are digested faster, the risk of accumulating fats decreases. Even if it’s a custom in restaurants, alcohol is not recommended right after eating because it returns the hunger sensation.
But even with these tips for dinning out on a diet, I sometimes fail to choose the best foods or I am simply too tempted by a certain food that everyone else is having and can’t help myself. When this happens, I will wake up the next morning at least one hour earlier, give up on coffee and replace it with a glass of orange juice freshly squeezed and then go out for a half hour rapid walk in the park near my house. It really does work wonders, because in more than two months now I’ve managed not to destroy any diet plan with my frequent dinning out customs.
