Choosing A Restaurant While Eating Healthy

 

The main thing to keep in mind when you choose a restaurant is, can you work within their menu so you can stay on your nutrition program. Most restaurants have these items a la carte:

•Filet Mignon or other steak

•Chicken, or Chicken Breast

•Green Veggies or Salad

•Potato or Sweet Potato

•Some sort of White Fish

The other thing that you’d like to keep in mind is portion sizes for these foods. While I’m not expecting you to break out a food scale while you’re in a restaurant (I’ve had clients that have done this before), there are other ways to find out the portion sizes of the foods your plan to eat. Even though it might not be on the menu, or posted anywhere in the restaurants, sometimes you can ask the waiter/waitress, and if they don’t know they’ll ask the cook, what the typical portion size is. For example, I ordered the Mahi-mahi and salad at Huey’s and found out the portion size for the fish was 8 oz., so I know it has about 42 grams of protein, and 2 grams of fat, with maybe 10-12 grams of carbs, from the salad which is mostly fiber. When you can get olive oil and vinegar over some of the other dressing,definitely go for that. If you try to get it from an Italian dressing, most of the time there’s very little olive oil, and it’s mostly soybean oil, which is not nearly as healthy as olive oil.

Since most people have problems with portion sizes when trying to lose weight and/or fail to count calories, you can use this strategy made popular by Precision Nutrition to increase your chances of success:

For Women:

•1 palm sized portion for protein

•1 fist sized portions for veggies

•1 cupped hands for starchy carbs

•1 thumb sized portions for fat

For Men:

•2 palm sized portions for Protein

•2 fist sized portions veggies

•2-cupped hands for starchy carbs

•2 thumb sized portions of fat

If you’re eating at a restaurant, and the food portion sizes are actually larger than you need at that meal, you could take the rest home in a doggy bag. Which would also make for a quick and easy breakfast, or lunch on the next day. You’re not required to eat the whole meal in one sitting. If you’d like to more info on this, check out this video

https://youtu.be/_VjgPSMzIuY