When eating out is a letdown

I get so bitter when I spend calories on something that isn't worth it. I have no problem making something delicious fit my goals, but it really sucks when you make room and it's no goof. I feel your pain.

I am so with you. I want every food that passes these lips to taste amazing.

The worst!!!!

Yep, I went out to dinner with my mum and got macaroni last week. It was absolutely disgusting and I was really annoyed I'd wasted calories on it. I ate half because I was trying not to be rude but I could not justify finishing it all and going over my daily goal for it.

10/10 on here would agree. Haha. I've learned to try a smaller portion of a new food whenever possible to avoid this situation.

I. HEAR. YOU. I try my best to plan meals that are worth it to avoid feeling unsatisfied. Disappointing food makes me want cake. LOL!!!

I was all ready to come home from church and fix, for the first time, some shrimp tacos. I had all the stuff. Then Mrs. asked if we could have lunch out at a nice Italian joint. So, there we went and I got a Caprese salad, which is a sliced big tomato, several sliced small tomatoes, and a few ounces of buffalo mozzarella with a few green things and some oil. Filling, it was not, but that's ok. I'll have a shrimp taco for dinner and stay in my calorie targets. My earlier plan had a big pile of protein for dinner but that's off the plan now so my day is going to miss the protein macro by a bunch. At least I had a 20% discount coupon.

Very rarely happens to my wife and I. We don't eat out often, so when we do it's usually one of our favorite local establishments. If we are trying a new place it usually is coming from a lot of good feedback from our friends who also tend to be a little food snobby like us. Usually a bad experience at one of these places is just a one off.

There is one place that we like that is kind of hit and not usually a complete miss, but sometimes it's just better than other times. This place is a farm to table restaurant so what they have on hand is always changing so their menu is never the same...but for the most part, it's usually pretty solid.

We don't tend to do franchise chains much as we find the food to be generally sub par...about the only exception is Jason's Deli for lunch on a weekend sometimes...they're salad bar is pretty solid.

I've been getting into cooking in the last year. I'm not that great at it but I've made some amazing things from time to time, mostly recipes from New York Times Cooking. At the very least I know what I'm getting, so there's no guesswork, which sadly is part of the "eating out" territory.

Having been burned several times at old "favorite" restaurants, I've decided that I would find out what a restaurant does well and stick to that. A local diner does burgers well, but order the chicken only if your shoe needs temporary repair. So I only go there when I'm ready for a burger. The Asian place tends to serve Cantonese dishes swimming in sugary sauce with a mountain of rice. But there are some Thai red curry dishes with rice noodles that are spicy and delicious, so I go with what they do well.

I never order steak anywhere, because a) it's always 4 times as much meat as I can eat at one sitting and b) the veggies are normally an afterthought and c) I can cook it better myself anyway. I've gotten used to the "Welcome, we haven't seen you in a while!" greetings.

I'm not god's gift to cooking, but I have lost 90 lbs in the last year and am shifting into maintenance mode, so I have that going for me. Don't get me wrong, I love a good meal, well prepared, but food isn't the cheap drug it used to be. I've evolved into a choosy eater. I'd say that's a big improvement from where I started, which was potato chips by the 1 lb bag. Ugh.