Eating out...Do you just stay in?

not_my_first_rodeo wrote: »

Why would you cut this out? It's a part of life. I'm treating this journey as a lifestyle change. I enjoy good food. I like eating at nice restaurants, especially with friends. I refuse to give up going out to eat once in a while. It's doable. You don't need to drag a food scale with you. You don't have to limit yourself to chain restaurants.

Here's what I do:

• Peruse menus ahead of time if possible so I have a sense of what my options are.
• Sites like Yelp often comment on portion sizes or give you pictures so you know what you're facing.
• Lots of places offer small plates.
• Unless the bread is supposed to be fantastic, I skip it.
• Salad--dressing on the side.
• I try and eat lighter/less for the rest of the day.
• I overestimate on the calories when I log it.

I agree with most of your points, and I do follow them. Except that I don't log restaurant calories at all unless I find the nutritional information in their website or in MFP. I don't waste my time looking for something similar because it is not important to me and the estimation will not be accurate anyway. So why bother? And I never used or heard about Yelp (but I may try it in the future) so I wait until I get to the restaurant and I ask the waiter about the size of their portions and decide from there.

I ate out or had a social meal once a week throughout my weight loss. It was non negotiabe for me.

I made different choices based on what I wanted. Sometimes I ate low calorie item, and sometimes I ate half a meal. And sometimes I ate a huge fattening pile of greasy bar food.

When I did the latter. I would see a 5 pound gain the next day, but as long as I was spot on the rest of the week, I usually STILL lost a little after the week was up.

Think long term. If you can't give it up forever, the figure out how you can have it occasionally. And accept that sometimes it might slow the WL a bit.

Most folk will lose weight if they make great choices 80 percent of the time and enjoy the remaining 20.

Works in my case.

If my husband and I cycle the Cycleway in the city after work, or if we go to the gym, we'll usually swing by a Subway and pick up a sub for dinner. The tuna sub fits within my calorie count. This happens about once every other week.

If my husband and I go to the symphony (Fridays about once a month), we'll usually drop by Zambreros for a burrito just before the performance. I climb extra stairs that day and go for a long walk at lunch.

If we cycle 100 km+ on the weekend, we'll pick up a pizza each at Dominos, or stop for fish and chips, or maybe go to an Indian restaurant. That happens once or twice a month.



As for going out just for the sake of going out ... we do that for special occasions or on trips.

We got away for 4 days over Christmas and ate in restaurants a few times then. Before that, we went out for dinner for my graduation earlier in December. Before that, I think we went out after I finished my final exam in October.

I'm careful to be sure my willpower is a full strength. I try to save nights out for days I already had a good workout or I know I will have one the next day.

Of our regular haunts I've made better food choices, instead of burger and fries i get pork loin with 2 veggie sides. No appetizers. If I allow wing night, we still get our usual dry rub choices, but get 20 wings for the two of us instead of 40 (which allows a nice doggie bag of extras for later in the week).

Etc.

Christine_72 wrote: »

Reading all of these replies has made me realise what a home body i am! We haven't been out for dinner/lunch in months, probably 5 or 6. I cant even remember the last time we had take away

I am actually a chef by trade. I pretty much have to go out if I want to stay on top of food trends, plus it gets tiring when you cook all day and then all night as well. It's a treat to have food made by someone else! I don't use my meals out as cheat meals usually though. It's more so I can socialize with friends.

I eat out regularly but like some have already said I try to stick to chain reaturaunts, especially the ones with calories on the actual menu. Otherwise u cant go wrong with a medium sized steak and jacket spud with salad without creamy sauces for around 700 cals. At really calorific resturaunts iv been known to have the house salad with grilled chicken, ham or prawns requesting no cheese or mayo..... worst case scenario a starter will suffice. if its a special occasion I just pretend that day didnt exist.

If I just started eating on my new plan, I give it a week or two before I eat out. After I've been on plan 1-2 weeks, I accept the invitation and find appropriate dishes on the menu, even look online at the menu before going.

For booze: flavored vodka + club
Glass of white wine + glass of sparkling water ...dilute wine for for wine spritzer

I don't eat out often, but I don't turn down invitations unless I don't like the place I'm being invited to. When I was losing weight, I did eat out even less often, but my social life didn't suffer; food is never the only focus of my social events. Rather, it is the company of others. You can always hang out with friends and just order water.
The extra sodium that commercially prepared food usually has may mask your weight loss, so I *can* see why you might want to hold off on eating out for a little while.
If anything, just overestimate your intake (reasonably) from now on.
Then again, if you're eating out only once a fortnight, perhaps there are CICO errors elsewhere as well?

No, don't stay in, eating out is one of life's greatest pleasures imo.
How you get round it is eating a bit more at deficit during the week so you can eat out safe in the knowledge you have banked extra calories to enjoy.

Excellent strategies and tips in this topic.

Let me add one I guess it was not mention: step ahead when asking for restaurant choices.

My first choice is seafood and fish restaurants. Is one of the few places where a salad and steamed potatoes are the soud choice for side order to a fresh grilled fish :-) (for me is important to not to llok like a diet freak).

Second choice is meat restaurants (for instance argentinean), excellent grilled low-fat high-quality meat. Salad can be weird, but there is always a choice for a baked potatod (my favorite over smashed and fried).

Then, as time passes, I discovered that almost all kind of restaurants have a healthy choice without the need to look at the "healthy section" of the menu.

Last experience, somebody invite for a Turkish restaurant. A good Turkish restaurant have excellent baked meat (kebab), usually served with salad, and another of my favorites: tabboluleh. Just make sure the tabbluleh main ingredient is the parsley and not the bulgur so it will be a very light dish. Then go for the baklava :-)

Hope this helps.