A guide to going out to eat.

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Replies

  • MFD7576
    MFD7576 Posts: 271 Member
    MFD7576 wrote: »
    Troutsy wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    Did your other thread get deleted or what? I remember posting on this thread a while ago.

    I cleaned it up a bit and reposted. The other thread is slated to be deleted.

    Well I gotta find that thread and copypasta my reply from that one into here!

    Curious, why?

    Why is the other thread slated to be deleted? I have no clue!

    No why would you wanna repost your comment? Reforming an OP and updating seems proactive but copy and past a reply is redundant unless im missing something
  • Azexas
    Azexas Posts: 4,334 Member
    Troutsy wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    Did your other thread get deleted or what? I remember posting on this thread a while ago.

    I cleaned it up a bit and reposted. The other thread is slated to be deleted.

    Well I gotta find that thread and copypasta my reply from that one into here!

    I did throw the Enjoy yourself from the last thread in there like you had suggested before :)
  • Azexas
    Azexas Posts: 4,334 Member
    MFD7576 wrote: »
    MFD7576 wrote: »
    Troutsy wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    Did your other thread get deleted or what? I remember posting on this thread a while ago.

    I cleaned it up a bit and reposted. The other thread is slated to be deleted.

    Well I gotta find that thread and copypasta my reply from that one into here!

    Curious, why?

    Why is the other thread slated to be deleted? I have no clue!

    No why would you wanna repost your comment? Reforming an OP and updating seems proactive but copy and past a reply is redundant unless im missing something

    You're missing something, I will explain later.
  • MFD7576
    MFD7576 Posts: 271 Member
    My reply from the original thread, before it gets nuked:
    This is great! One thing I'd like to add:

    Enjoy Yourself!

    So many posts seem to approach dining out while "dieting" with dread. Some anxiety is normal but I think perspective gets lost when people focus too much on eating correctly (whatever that means), and forget all the other aspects of dining out. Enjoy the meal out-that you didn't have to cook!- whether it's at a fast food joint or a fancy restaurant. Relish your favourite dish or adventuring with new flavours. Cherish the memories with friends or family. (And if it's a catered work affair, revel in free food!)

    Then I redact why I asked why ahaha its contructive. sorry I took that a bit differently.
  • jaqcan
    jaqcan Posts: 498 Member
    #2!!!!!!! I pre planned what I wanted to have at a ladies brunch before I went. It was a local place so I had to use random entries to get the whole meal. I'm glad I did. I would have blown 900 calories on what I thought would be a well rounded meal. That's over half my day :# I changed my mind before the restaurant and instead ordered a short stack of banana nut pancakes and sipped coffee and water while chatting with my friends! I saved myself 550 calories just by taking the time to pre-plan. Other times it's totally worth it to splurge, but not that day.
  • Azexas
    Azexas Posts: 4,334 Member
    Troutsy wrote: »
    Troutsy wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    Did your other thread get deleted or what? I remember posting on this thread a while ago.

    I cleaned it up a bit and reposted. The other thread is slated to be deleted.

    Well I gotta find that thread and copypasta my reply from that one into here!

    I did throw the Enjoy yourself from the last thread in there like you had suggested before :)

    Ah sweet, well I can delete my now-reposted comment if you want then.

    Nah, keep it! It's something that should be stressed more than once.
  • michellemybelll
    michellemybelll Posts: 2,228 Member
    love it. great advice/thoughts/ideas. :smile:
  • DuckReconMajor
    DuckReconMajor Posts: 434 Member
    Troutsy wrote: »
    Great post! One I'd like to add for obsessive loggers like myself who refuse to take a bite of something I haven't logged:

    If you absolutely must log a meal you have when dining out (and the above options just won't do), give yourself a set time limit (say 1-5 min) to stress about figuring out the best way to log it, then after that just log your most educated guess at the time and move on. The fact that you're putting that much thought into it means you're already a few steps ahead of the game.

    Agreed. That's why I said "Enjoy yourself" at the end. In the beginning I found going out to eat stressful, but it's about a system that works for us. I tend to preplan before I go out and choose things that will fit into my goals. But then there are days where I fall under choice 1 and say screw it, I won't log.

    Yeah I agree totally, but you know how we issss. I need a hard limit sometimes of "ok im gonna worry X amount about it then I'm done"
  • MrsMizart
    MrsMizart Posts: 1,275 Member
    Ah, but what is one to do when one eats out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner four or five days a week...?

    Staying away for work for months on end (although home for two or three days a week) has the potential to suck.
  • Azexas
    Azexas Posts: 4,334 Member
    MrsMizart wrote: »
    Ah, but what is one to do when one eats out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner four or five days a week...?

    Staying away for work for months on end (although home for two or three days a week) has the potential to suck.

    Can you meal prep for a week on a day that you are home to cut back on how much you are going out? I'm just thinking of the cost of eating out that much.

    But my OP still applies, you are just eating out a little more than someone else. I wouldn't recommend the first bullet point and recommend following the second more closely and preplan where you are going and what you are going to it.
  • Azexas
    Azexas Posts: 4,334 Member
    love it. great advice/thoughts/ideas. :smile:

    Thank you :)
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
    This is a good thread!
  • Azexas
    Azexas Posts: 4,334 Member
    Orphia wrote: »
    This is a good thread!

    Thanks!
  • Kexessa
    Kexessa Posts: 346 Member
    I generally wing it. But I do try and order things I either can't or won't make at home. I don't see much point to going out and spending $15 on a chef salad when I eat salad most days a week at home. It makes it seem more worth it to me. I don't pre-plan though. I can't let myself get that obsessive about it. If I do I may not stop.
  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
    I've nominated this for a sticky. I love it.
  • Diana_GettingFit
    Diana_GettingFit Posts: 458 Member
    Outstanding post. It'll help a lot of people. This thread should get a stickie.
  • MFD7576
    MFD7576 Posts: 271 Member
    Here's a new pro tip (trust me here)

    Step 1) Pick a Single Restaurant - Identify one single place you love to go to and stick with it for the long term. Reason? Chefs don't change often so neither do the portion sizes. Take a mental note of what they serve in size and remember it for a later step.

    Step 2) Pick a Single Dish - Identify that one dish you love at the restaurant and run with it. Reason? Some people (me) go to a single place because of a single dish. Sure variety is the spice of life but I look at it as a comfort treat too.

    Step 3) Have a Trial Run - One super rough logged or maybe even no logged day, enjoy the food and don't give it a second thought - Reason? You'll use this day as the day you mentally take note of everything about the dish. Ingredients, sides, and portions.

    Step 4) Use MFP Meal Creator - take your notes about the food and throw them at the website, help the site help you figure out what the macros work out to be! You even then justify if you should half it and take it home, or devour it then and there. Reason? Ingredients don't really change, it's kinda common knowledge that unless noted, they use pretty generic standard items and not the low cal bread or lite mayo by default. So you can get away with eye balling it pretty well. See a slice of cheddar on your burger? It's a normal slice, use Boars Head!

    Step 5) Put all your information to the test and rinse and repeat. More importantly, just have some fun with it and keep enjoying it, it isn't a race to lose weight, it's a test to yourself.

    This was meant to be a personal insight on Troutsy log what you see portion, I hope she likes it and I hope you all like it too.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited July 2015
    Great thread.

    I think people have their own ways of handling this, but it's definitely possible to include restaurant meals and be successful. I lost 95 lbs and have been maintaining for a few months despite going out to dinner usually a couple times a week, and all to local restaurants without calorie counts. (And a variety of different restaurants, since we like to try new places and there are so many good restaurants in my city.)

    I vary in how I handle this. Sometimes I plan for a splurge and save up calories (this is especially nice on weekends when I sometimes do a huge workout). Other times I simply order carefully and arrange the rest of my day to fit it in. I always add in excess calories since you know they are there, absent a calorie count (I usually log them as extra butter, sometimes added calories or just do an overall added calorie entry). I mostly changed my ways by stopping my old pretense that a restaurant meal meant I should assume indulgence, since it was a special occasion--I go out too much to treat it always as a special occasion. So I don't eat the bread on the table, don't necessarily have extra courses (I might get a salad as an appetizer or extra veggies if the veggies are otherwise lower than I like, but I ask questions or get dressing on the side or the like to make sure it's not crazy extra calories). And I decide at the beginning what a proper serving size is and stick with it and stop eating when I eat the amount I decided upon.

    There are, of course, exceptions to all of this.

    And most importantly since it's something I do regularly I can see how it's working. If it isn't, change it up.