How to eat healthy when eating out

There are competing strategies.

It depends on your goal, which may not be the same each time you are out.

Generally speaking, salad entrees with an added low calorie protein and no dressing, or dressing on the side, are your best bet in terms of healthy, low calorie choices. Also steamed vegetables, and grilled or baked low calorie entrees.

Salad dressing, olive oil, butter, and margarine all have (as a rule of thumb!) 100 calories per tablespoon.
Most breads are on the order of 75-150 calories per slice
Most starches (potatoes, rice, couscous, quinoa) are about 100 calories per 3/4 cup.

Typically the bread, starches and condiments are the biggest calorie landmines.

You will probably develop a sense of how large a portion you have.

The other approach is to decide that for that meal, if you go over the goal on calories it's not a big deal, and to have what you really enjoy but are now choosing to indulge in only rarely. That works if you can limit that indulgence approach to "occasionally". If you go out frequently, you may want to use the low calorie strategy most of the time, but occasionally (1 in 5? I in 10?) opt for the indulgence.

Another strategy is to select your restaurants with care. Since I started being more selective about what I eat, most of what I can eat "out" doesn't appeal to me. It's not worth the calories. The portions are large, starch-heavy, and - frankly - mediocre.

When I've been eating out a lot, I really "tighten the belt," so to speak. Here's what my plan usually consists of:

• Eat light the rest of the day and order water with the meal.
• Resist any chips or bread that come before the meal.
• Order "lean," such as turkey or chicken - preferrably grilled (red meat is fine, but white gives you fewer cals per ounce).
• Ask for sauces/dressings on the side.
• Make sure there's a good veggie side dish included for some nutrients and lower-cal filler.
• Make sure to stop when that "content" feeling hits my belly. There's nothing wrong with leaving a little behind on the plate.

That being said, there are occasional gaps when I won't go out for quite a while. On those days, I try to keep my alcohol/soda consumption down, order a reasonably balanced meal, and log everything, even if it makes me go over my daily intake. I enjoy it as the treat it is and then move on. I may spend the next few days at a lower intake (by 100 or so calories) to make up for at least a little of it by the end of the week.

As far as logging goes - an average fist equals roughly a cup. No, I realize this isn't an ideal way to measure at all, but subtly holding your hand up to your plate is better than bringing a food scale to the table, or doing nothing at all.

First, I try very hard to not eat in restaurants.

When I must, if it isn't a salad bar kind of place, I pick whatever I like and usually eat about half of it.

Restaurant food is rarely super-healthy. If I'm going to eat something unhealthy, it's going to be something I really love.

Eat a snack right before you go out so you're not starving when you order. Check out the calories using your cell phone BEFORE you start ordering. Get a to go box when you order. When you get the meal, put the portion that you're not going to eat inside the to go box. And ask the waiter not to bring you any chips, breads, etc.

Also I try to keep healthy snacks in the car

You can't be at all exact with calories, but that's okay. I lost my 95 lbs while still going out to dinner once or twice a week--always at places without calorie counts--since I really enjoy trying new restaurants or going to old favorites and so do my friends, so it's a part of my social life. Since I go relatively regularly, my old habits of treating a restaurant as an excuse to splurge was the problem, not going out itself, and I personally think restaurant food can be perfectly healthy (as I define it), but simply is going to be much more calorie dense than what you cook yourself, in all likelihood. You also need to watch out for serving size, at some restaurants more than others.

What I do is make sure I'm not getting lots of calories from the starters or appetizers, don't eat the bread on the table, order sensibly (unless it's a splurge evening), and decide upfront what portion of my meal strikes me as a proper serving size and then I stick to that. If I just decide to eat until I'm finished, it's really easy to overeat since it's on the plate and you are talking and having fun.

And then I tend to either guess at the components of the meal and add lots of extra butter or just quick add based on my eyeballing. (The recommended "use another restaurant" never seems to work for me, either because the restaurant meals I choose aren't really like anything else in there or because serving sizes vary so much. If it's something simple like meat, veggies, potatoes, and the like it's easy enough to use the components also.)

When I was actively trying to lose weight (I'm doing maintenance now), I would either be sure to eat lightly at other meals when I was going out or use exercise calories to cover it -- either by floating them over a week or, often, because I tend to both go out and do longer workouts on Saturdays (my long run or long bike ride day).