Dinning Out With A Healthier Approach
Being on a diet is never enjoyable. It feels great to get results but many people experience numerous obstacles when it comes to ‘eating clean’. Enjoying a good meal at a restaurant with friends or family can be huge part of our social lives. If you try to limit or completely eliminate these things you may feel like you can’t enjoy your social life. It may even get to the point that you give up trying because you can’t seem to balance healthy eating with your social life. I am confident that you can be on a diet and still eat socially and have just as much fun! Here are some easy pointers take on dinning out with a healthier approach:
1. Take a glance at the menu in advance - If you happen to know where you will be eating, it is helpful to take a look at the menu in advance. You can decide what you want ahead of time and reference such websites such as CalorieKing.com to look up the caloric values of the meal choices. Some restaurants even have the calories and breakdown on their website or menu.
2. Avoid Sauces and dressings - A lot of the calories we consume come from saturated fat and sugar. Restaurants add these things to the food in the form of sauces and dressings to enhance the taste. Try asking them to put the salad dressing or sauce on the side and portion it yourself. You can avoid 100’s of unnecessary calories this way.
3. Portion Control – Typically, restaurants served oversized portions. You may want to try splitting your meal in two or sharing with someone. Remember, just because it is on your plate, doesn’t mean you have to eat it all.
4. Don’t go to diner starving – If you get to dinner and you haven’t eaten all day, there is a good chance everything on the menu will look great, and you will overeat and blow your caloric budget out of the water! Of course you don’t want to show up to dinner stuffed either, but make sure you have had some smaller meals throughout the day. This will keep your metabolism working and prevent over eating.
5. Save your calories – If you are aware that you are supposed to consume 1800 calories a day in order to stay on your nutrition program, then it may be good idea to save a little extra calories for dinning out meal. For example, if you eat six times a day and each meal is 300 calories, take 50 calories out of each meal and leave yourself a few hundred extra to play with while you’re out. You will enjoy it more if you are not so constricted.
6. Make it your cheat day – Every once in a while we all should have a cheat day or a high calorie day. If you eat healthy 6 days a week and never go over your calories, it is a good idea every once in a while to have a higher calorie day. This keeps the body guessing by giving yourself a little higher calorie shock you will speed up the metabolism.
Most things can be done in moderation. Eating healthy is about making certain lifestyle changes and sticking to them, rather than trying to completely restrict ourselves from what we enjoy. Dining out can be an enjoyable experience for anyone, regardless of diet. Not only will you feel much better with healthier eating habits, but you are guaranteed to look better too. If you can learn to balance your life with healthy eating and still having fun you are on a good road to success!