Making Restaurant Food "Fit"

A typical adult eats out 5.8 times a week! Learning how to eat out and stay on plan is key to weight loss success and managing our weight once we lose it.

Restaurant foods can be a good fit with your healthy life!

Your strategy may differ depending on the reason for dining out. Every routine eating-out event shouldn't be a "splurge", and special occasions don't have to be reasons to lose control.

Plan ahead and enjoy yourself!

"every day" eating out includes:

Lunch at your work cafeteria

Fast Food restaurants

Business travel, including airports or convenience store

Too busy or tired to cook, so we'll order in

In your car while traveling

Special Occasions can call for the occasional splurge, digging into your weekly points, if necessary.

This includes:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays

Special celebrations

For starters, if you're the decision maker on what restaurant is going to be chosen, choose wisely and take into consideration your plan. If I am choosing the restaurnat, it's going to be someplace that I consider safe territory, that way I am less likely to be persuaded into eating something that I will regret later. Use your dining out guide and see what low points foods are available.

Be familiar with your meal plan. You shouldn't have to spend 20 minutes looking through your pocket guide to figure out what you can eat. Get that knowledge before you go. Look online for menus.

Know how much is too much; learn to recognize your portions by measuring when at home.

If portion is too large, share with a dining partner or ask for a to go box as soon as your meal arrives.

Avoid "all you can eat" restaurants and buffets. Most of us have difficulty eating sensibly at these making it easy to overeat.

Ask for skinless chicken, no butter on a particular dish, broiled instead of fried, and your sauces to be served on the side.

Look for low fat options. (some are marked on menus now)

Skip the bread basket!

Go easy on the alcohol which can impare your judgement and cause you to eat the whole marionberry cobbler. LOL

Order first.

A salad can be a good choice, just watch the dressing and the extras they put on it.

Broth or tomato based soup is generally a wise choice.

Convenience store or airport:

Have your points slider or calculator with you so you can use the nutritional label to figure out points values.

Choose foods or sandwiches with whole grains and no mayo.

Get some fruit instead of a bag of chips.

Almonds, walnuts and peanuts can be a good choice. (not necessarily trail mix or sweetened nuts)

Hard boiled eggs

Low fat yogurt

Knowing that you can still eat out and on the run with just a little bit of planning makes life on WW so much easier and successful.