How to eat in restaurants and still lose fat....

Today's Post: Thursday, 1-12-2012

(This is also “Solutions to common fat loss problems, part 6”; but I wanted to make it easy for people with the problem to find it!)

People eat out and at restaurants for far more of their food than they once did.

So if they do it wrong, it can make it impossible to lose fat and its weight. It can even cause fat and weight gain!

Worse, restaurants and fast food places make it quite easy to eat too much and of the worst foods and drinks. And, they can at times make it hard to eat well.

So between the importance and the difficulty of this problem it’s important to know how to solve it.

The good news is that solving this problem is quite doable.

One group that learned one set of strategies to use in restaurants, wound up using them at home too and lost weight both eating out AND at home.

That set of strategies we’ll cover last.

1. First, many people eat breakfast and lunch at restaurants. And due to the time pressures and the large number of fast food places, people often eat at fast food places for these meals.

There are four ways to solve this problem.

a) You can often find a way to eat at your desk or in your company break room and bring your breakfast and lunch most days. You control that far more. And the things that will harm your health and make you fat can be left off your menu totally.

Similarly, you can eat a fast but healthy breakfast at home that’s faster to eat than the time needed to go to a fast food place.

I do both. I prep both my breakfasts and part of my bag lunches the night before. Each of them takes less than 10 minutes to eat.

b) You can edit what you order and which parts of it you eat even if you go to a fast food place. For this you have to really know to avoid the things that harm you and make you fat. And you have to do it when you are hungry.

It IS doable if you focus on why NOT to eat the bad stuff and order and eat enough of the good or at least better stuff to turn off your hunger.

Drink water or coffee or tea and never get soft drinks! Both regular AND diet are proven to make you fat and aren’t that great for your health either.

This is close to half the battle in terms of fat loss because all soft drinks are so fattening!

Leave out all or almost all of the refined grain foods.

Ask for your sandwiches “Atkins style” on a plate with no bread. Or remove the bread you are served and toss it in with the other trash before you go. You will need to get a fork or use your fingers in the worst case. But most places do have plastic spoons and forks at least.

Ask they not serve extra bread or a package of chips. If they do serve it, leave it or toss it out. These both surge your blood sugar and add extra calories and give you no real nutrition. The chips are proven fatteners and the bread is little better.

Virtually NEVER order or eat croissants or dessert foods at a fast food place.

Once you remove the refined grains, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and bad oils or worse, hydrogenated oils, from these things you have nothing left! And every single one of those ingredients is both fattening and harmful to you!

(Bring a bit of raw nuts or a dark chololate bar to eat before you go in or after for dessert if you really want one.)

Skip or toss out the fries. If you are very hungry and love them, get the smallest package and eat less than half of them. (They surge your blood sugar as much as bread and more than sugar! And the oils they are cooked in aren’t that great for you, all are high in omega 6 oils; and fries add extra calories and no nutrition. Plus most people eat enough salt without adding the salt in fries.)

If you get a hamburger or two, ask for extra onion and be sure to get and eat the lettuce and tomato. The onion and lettuce and tomato help fill you up. And the onion is a partial antidote to the fats in the hamburger.

If they offer it, it can also be worth getting grilled chicken or ham or sliced turkey or avocado instead of hamburger.

(Don’t eat fish in fast food places. Except for the halibut at Fish and Chips places, the other fish is farmed fish which are incredibly high in pollutants.)

If one meat serving and the vegetables will leave you too hungry without the chips, fries, and bread, order two.

Some fast food places now will give you a decent salad with no dressing or dressing on the side. Even if you only eat part a salad they are made up out of lettuce and tomatoes and onions, each of which is a nonstarchy vegetable that will help fill you up.

c) Go to Subway! If you can avoid the bread and get your sandwich Atkins style and NOT get desserts or soft drinks, Subway is a great resource!

There are Subway locations almost everywhere. And they DO have choices like grilled chicken, ham, sliced turkey, and avocado for their sandwich fillings.

Best of all, they allow you to add all the diced onion, tomato, and other veggies you want at no extra charge. They also have a great tasting diced up mild pepper you can get. If you get a vegetarian or avocado sandwich and a turkey sandwich both Atkins style and add these veggies to your taste, you can eat quite well at a Subway for lunch and not eat or drink fattening stuff!

d) Eat at home or work most days. But when you do eat out go to a better class of restaurant. Good restaurants will be more comfortable with special requests and have better food choices on the menu. This strategy costs about the same as fast food every day. But it is often much better for you and less fattening.

2. What were the strategies used by the people in the article I read that lost weight after learning them even while they ate at restaurants a lot?

They learned which foods to order on the menus of the restaurants they went to. If they had been eating fattening foods before, they tried the more healthful and less fattening choices.

a) If they had been eating the appetizers and desserts and second or third glasses of wine suggested by the wait staff, they usually to always said no instead of always saying yes!

b) They were also taught a strategy I’m personally fond of.

“Make each calorie count.” They were taught to occasionally eat treat foods but only their most favorite ones. If it was an OK but not great treat food always pass! Why waste your extra calories on stuff you don’t like that much anyway?!

c) They were also trained to always order many of the more fattening ingredients on the side. This is most important for salad dressing. But if they would otherwise overdo it, it can help to do this for gravy and butter too.

d) They also taught “mindful” eating. One strategy was to rate how hungry you are before eating from 1 to 10. That helps to avoid eating 10 units of food when you would have been full at 5 to 7!

e) If you find you have food on your plate when you are no longer hungry, just leave it or ask for a take out container for it.

f) “Pay attention.’:

If you notice the smell and taste and texture of the food as you eat it, it fills you up faster.

Half way through, rate how hungry you are then. That avoids eating extra on autopilot while you are thinking about something else.

If you have time, slow down and talk to your companions or look about you at the décor or the scene outside. That both increases your enjoyment and stress relief and allows your stomach to register the food you just gave it. That means you’ll eat less and digest what you do eat better.

These 3 are the steps for mindful eating. They do help if you get used to always doing them. And, if you practice at home too, it becomes more likely you’ll use these steps when you eat out. Plus you may find as these people did that you lose more fat at home too.

3. Large portions are a common problem in restaurants.

You can leave out the stuff they would have served that’s fattening such as the bread, French fries, or potatoes or white rice. Ask them not to serve you any!

You can order extra vegetable sides instead. Larger amounts of those help you lose fat!

You can split a meal between yourself and another person. For couples going to places with large portions or who are conserving money, this can work quite well.

You can ask for the take out container at the start of the meal and put the half you really don’t need now into it before you start eating.

Or you can eat what you are actually hungry for and get a take out container then.

4. You can find and go to restaurants and fast food places that make this style of eating easier. (Subway qualifies if you know how to eat there and do NOT eat or drink the other stuff.) But this often works best at good restaurants in upscale neighborhoods.

The other way to do it is to go to a restaurant regularly and be nice to the wait staff and learn their names if you can.

They will then get to know you and what you want. They may even do things for you they normally don’t do for their less regular customers. Tipping decently helps too!

I like eating out. If you do also, these are strategies you can use to avoid it being fattening or stopping you from losing fat!