Dining Out - The Right Way To Do It

You've been craving to eat out for several days now, and as you're fairly busy and don't have enough time to cook, you think I might as well dine out. When you arrive, you look down at the menu and gasp, eyes wide open in horror.

There’s nothing on there that even resembles the chicken salad you usually have for dinner and every dish is a potential diet-wrecker. Ultra-high in calories, laden with carbohydrate and swimming in fat. A week of progress can be overturned in one feel swoop. What are you supposed to do in this situation?

You can’t simply not eat. Not only are you starving hungry and your stomach is rumbling, but you’re in company, and just sipping from your glass of tap water would look weird. Likewise you really don’t want to undo the weeks and weeks of hard dieting all for the sake of one, not even special, meal out. Don't worry, we've got your back.

Fortunately, there are ways you can develop the tools needed to overcome tricky situations like this. Dining out will no longer have to undo all your progress with some simple tricks. All you need to do is plan ahead a little bit and be prepared.

Eating out the right and healthy way is all about two things – planning before you head out, and when that isn’t an option, learning what to do at a moment’s notice to change a potential dieting disaster into a dieting triumph.

Let’s take a look at what you can do to dine out the right way, starting with before you even leave the house.

Pre-Restaurant Tactics

Check the Menu

If you know where you’re going, this is an easy one. Once your table’s been booked, or even before then, when you’re deciding where to go, have a look at the menus of each place. If you’re deciding on a location, stop by a few of the potential restaurants before you book, or take a look at the menus before you book, to choose the one with the best options.

Even if someone else is making the call on where you’re going, it’s worth checking it out first. Download the restaurant’s menu from their website, and make the choice on what you’ll eat before you get there. It’s so easy to choose the thing you fancy the most when you’re sitting at the table, hungry and ready to eat, rather than the one that’s best for you.

Have one or two backup dishes too, in case your first choice isn’t available.

Follow a Flexible Dieting Schedule

A flexible diet is one that doesn’t dictate exactly what you eat and when.

While a typical bodybuilding style plan, or one taken from a magazine might say you must eat one chicken, breast, 50 grams of brown rice, with broccoli and green beans at 7:30 every evening, a flexible diet is one that simply counts calories, and preferable macronutrients – proteins, carbohydrates and fats. You can then eat whatever foods you like to fit those numbers, be it protein from fish, meat or dairy, carbs from rice, vegetables, potatoes, fries, or fat from any number of foods.

The great thing about flexible dieting is that no food is off limits, provided you fit it into your daily plan.

Train

If you’re trained hard in the day, you’re less likely to binge at night, knowing you’ve put the effort in earlier on. Your body may also use those potential extra calories and carbs to aid with recovery and top up your depleted glycogen stores, rather than storing them and converting them to fat if you’ve just been sitting on the couch all day.

Tweak Your Other Meals

If you do think you’re likely to indulge a little at dinner, then change your other meals to accommodate this. Stick to mainly protein-based foods and vegetables for the rest of the day so you don’t go wildly over your calorie intake later on.

Base your other meals around lean meat and fish, eggs, low-fat dairy products and protein shakes, as well as green and fibrous veggies and low-sugar fruits such as berries.

Six Restaurant Eating Tips

It’s crunch time. You’ve been good all day, had a hard training session and eaten well without starving yourself, so it really is make or break. Follow these tips to ensure your evening goes ahead with no hiccups.

1. Get a Side Salad

It doesn’t matter what main you’re having, even if it’s a salad too, having a side salad is a must. Salad vegetables are extremely low in calories, but surprisingly filling and you’ll be glad of it while your companions are chowing down their calorie-packed starters.

2. Be Smart with Your Drinks

If you’ve allowed yourself a few extra carbs or saved some calories for alcohol, that’s fine, but stick within your limits. Alcohol calories can add up seriously quickly, so if you only allowed for one glass of wine, then stick to that one glass. Order water or diet drinks for the rest of the meal. Much like the side salad, a big jug of iced tap water is a must for killing cravings.

3. Ask for Dressing on the Side

It’s one of the oldest tips in the book, but asking for dressing on the side really is a life saver. Full fat mayo, oils and sugary salad dressing will take your calorie intake through the roof, so get the chef to serve them on the side, then if you want them you can just add a little.

4. Learn to Say “No”

Whoever you’re with will probably try to get you to indulge and eat things that aren’t on your plan.

The reasons people do this aren’t always clear. It might be because they think you won’t enjoy yourself otherwise. Perhaps they want to bring you down to their level, believe it’s weird to avoid unhealthy food, or most probably, because they’re jealous of your self-discipline and restraint.

Stick to your guns and don’t be put off. They wouldn’t ask a vegetarian to eat meat or an ex-alcoholic to have a drink, so they shouldn’t bully you into eating something you don’t want to.

5. If All Else Fails, Protein and Veg

You can’t go wrong with a good quality steak accompanied by a side of roasted vegetables, or a tender chicken breast with a brightly colored stir fry. With foods like this, you’re getting a tone of protein to help keep you feeling full, plenty of fiber from the veggies, and minimal fat and carbs. Stop eating when you’re full and let your hunger, not your eyes, be the guide to when you’ve had enough.

6. Enjoy

It’s not all calorie counting and skipping dessert, dieting should be fun and eating out can be a part of that. You just have to be sensible and make healthy choices.