Eating out a lot - help!

lindzalexis

I've been on my journey for about 10 weeks now and I'm down almost 8 pounds, so I'm not complaining about my progress. But, I do have a question for those of you that find yourselves eating out a lot My lifestyle necessitates eating out a lot, and usually not at places which have nutritional info on the menu. I travel quite a bit, and even when I'm home I am often meeting clients for lunch/dinner/drinks, etc, I realistically cannot avoid these situations, and not eating at these meetings isn't really an option either.

I generally feel pretty good about knowing how to order healthy, but I really struggle with tracking and I fear I'm actually eating way more calories at these meals than I realize. Do you guys have a method for trying to track meals out? Sometimes I will find a generic entry for a dish and use that, but sometimes I'm left trying to break a meal down into ingredients, estimate portion sizes, etc, and I'm worried I suck at guessing.

What works for y'all?

LeslieB042812

First of all, congrats on your loss! You are doing really well, so clearly your estimates aren't hurting you too much. I also have a hard time with tracking in restaurants. The only thing that I think helps is if you order simple things and special order them. For example, grilled chicken and steamed vegetables (instead of sauteed vegetables that might have oil). You can do that without looking like a weirdo and can also estimate the caloric cost pretty well with fewer ingredients.

LeslieB042812

Oh, and for drinks, stick with light beer and/or wine because that's more standard/easier to estimate the calories than mixed drinks and they also last longer so you can have fewer (e.g. you can make one glass of wine last all dinner).