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  • SuzySunshine99
    SuzySunshine99 Posts: 2,984 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    TheWJordinWJordin wrote: »
    @ mjbn And, when you sit down to eat, you don't want a grilled chicken salad. You want to get your money's worth and try something delicious. I'm so bored with lettuce and chicken why would I want to pay for that at a restaurant?

    Some people obviously want them through, they're pretty widespread on menus. They wouldn't be if they didn't sell.

    I think a lot of people just want them because they think they are getting something "healthy". Probably most people ordering that dinner salad would rather have something else on the menu, but want to "be good".
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    SuzySunshine99 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    TheWJordinWJordin wrote: »
    @ mjbn And, when you sit down to eat, you don't want a grilled chicken salad. You want to get your money's worth and try something delicious. I'm so bored with lettuce and chicken why would I want to pay for that at a restaurant?

    Some people obviously want them through, they're pretty widespread on menus. They wouldn't be if they didn't sell.

    I think a lot of people just want them because they think they are getting something "healthy". Probably most people ordering that dinner salad would rather have something else on the menu, but want to "be good".

    But the point is that people are ordering them. What is motivating their desire to order it may be their belief that it's better for them, but it's still getting ordered.
  • SuzySunshine99
    SuzySunshine99 Posts: 2,984 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    SuzySunshine99 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    TheWJordinWJordin wrote: »
    @ mjbn And, when you sit down to eat, you don't want a grilled chicken salad. You want to get your money's worth and try something delicious. I'm so bored with lettuce and chicken why would I want to pay for that at a restaurant?

    Some people obviously want them through, they're pretty widespread on menus. They wouldn't be if they didn't sell.

    I think a lot of people just want them because they think they are getting something "healthy". Probably most people ordering that dinner salad would rather have something else on the menu, but want to "be good".

    But the point is that people are ordering them. What is motivating their desire to order it may be their belief that it's better for them, but it's still getting ordered.

    Very true. But it still makes me sad. :/
  • mjbnj0001
    mjbnj0001 Posts: 1,083 Member
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    chelseahatch24 wrote: »
    mjbnj0001 wrote: »
    chelseahatch24 wrote: »
    I actually sat down at texas roashouse last night and looked at the menu.... one of their salads was 1300 calories!!!

    Some of these salads are a whole day's worth of calories! I've watched a number of "disclosure" videos on youtube ("eat this, don't eat that" types of channels) that show how awful some of these dishes are (relative to calories and such). A number of the chains also show up in these "Vids of Shame" LOL.

    I even made up a "Average Diner Chef Salad" personal MFP recipe that calls for 655 cals per serving - prior to adding any dressing. I'm thinking even that's too low by about 35% (the exact amount of cheese can vary the count), so I might have to dissect my next salad better before eating it.

    Yep, you're absolutely right! I eat 1200 calories a day so you can imagine what i was thinking when I saw 1300!!!

    I'm at 2000/day, which gives me some relative buffer, but not really all that much more, and I'd agree with you that there's better way to punch through my targets than a tricked-up plate of salad, LOL.

    I've been tinkering around with homemade dressings this year; some, such as a Catalina-style, can be very low-calorie, and pretty low-fat, and thus not swamping your caloric counts. Yogurt/buttermilk, citrus, etc. are also good bases besides yet-another-vinaigrette.
  • mlinci
    mlinci Posts: 403 Member
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    My only "trick" with eating out is that it's much easier to stay within my calories if I go out for lunch than dinner.
    I can have a light breakfast, then say a pizza or a burger for lunch, and a very light dinner and I'd easily be within my calories for the day.
    If I go out for dinner, though, I kind of still need a normal sized breakfast and lunch beforehand, and if i have a pizza or burger, I'll end up over my calories. But occasionally having big dinners didn't harm my weight loss on the long term. It's a marathon and not a race.
    PS I remember visiting California few years ago and looking at the calories at the menu in the Cheesecake Factory - my slice of cheesecake was something like 1200 calories! Some of the dishes were over 3000 calories! Very eye opening.
  • petersonma
    petersonma Posts: 30 Member
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    One of the harder things about eating out is portion size. The food industry puts way too much for on the plate. It's one thing to leave food on the plate, it's another thing to eat less than half of the meal. I've gotten used to eating healthy portions, I can't eat most of our super-sized portions.

    Although for steak out, I will order 2-3 times what I can eat at the meal. It goes great as leftovers at home.
  • mjbnj0001
    mjbnj0001 Posts: 1,083 Member
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    mlinci wrote: »
    My only "trick" with eating out is that it's much easier to stay within my calories if I go out for lunch than dinner.
    ...
    PS I remember visiting California few years ago and looking at the calories at the menu in the Cheesecake Factory - my slice of cheesecake was something like 1200 calories! Some of the dishes were over 3000 calories! Very eye opening.

    Agreed. With me being, well, maybe retired and now doing the cooking for the continuing-to-work family, it turns out that dinner is the most likely eating-out candidate when it happens. What's not so good is that eating dinner out is more an unplanned thing than not, so that I have not made consumption adjustments during the day to allow for an "out" dinner.

    Cheesecake Factory has a number of items that regularly make it onto those "Big Calorie Meals" lists that pop up on the internet regularly.
  • tdelnay
    tdelnay Posts: 2 Member
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    Rule of thumb for me: Anytime I eat out, I get online, look up nutrition info and plan what I am going to eat before heading to the restaurant. When I get there, the decision has already been made and it has already been punched into MyFitnessPal. A big shocker for me was the amount of sodium restaurants put in low calorie foods. Sadly, there are not many restaurants that don't have fairly clean menus (low cal, low sodium, etc). Funny thing, the more I eat out, the more I have difficulty losing weight. I hate that because I love to eat out, but it's just the way it is.
  • MommaGem2017
    MommaGem2017 Posts: 405 Member
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    The Cheesecake Factory lists calories in the menu and it is sooooo useful, so I tend to choose there over other places. But just don't look at the calories in a slice of cheesecake
  • splinker
    splinker Posts: 17 Member
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    MommaGem2017 wrote: »
    The Cheesecake Factory lists calories in the menu and it is sooooo useful, so I tend to choose there over other places. But just don't look at the calories in a slice of cheesecake

    When I was the bad boy of gluttony, I would eat a meal at the cheesecake factory that had about the amount of calories I eat in three or four days now. And with enough salt that would make Lot's wife blush.

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