Need tips on staying socially active and eating at restaurants

normally I say you have to learn how to go out and live life and balance that with a calorie deficit. But you can't really eat out every day like that and easily remain in a deficit.

whats your calorie limit per day and activity level? that will give us an idea of what we are working with.


If its just simple SOCIALIZING - skip the food. or have a side salad (dressing on the side) and water/diet soda/ no calorie drink, and enjoy the company. eat your meal at home before you go so you are not hungry and liable to EAT in excess. Many restaraunts/bars will have lower calorie options also, and many have calories posted on their websites or you can find similar meals with calorie counts.

If more of an EVENT- like a wedding - buffets are usually easy to pick and choose lower calorie items. Even menus where you choose your food ahead of time you can get an idea of calories and work with it.

For me, it's pretty easy to only eat once a day- so it's not hard to wait until later to eat if I need to for some reason. SO, that could be an option. I would not do this if it is likely to make you binge and eat a LOT though. Everyone is different, in that regard.

IF you have been weighing and logging your food for some time, it's fairly easy to estimate what you are eating, and if you've been doing with for a relatively long time, be reasonably accurate at doing so.

steak, grilled chicken breast, steamed veg... all reasonable in calories and easy to estimate portion sizes. dont forget to add on extra cals for butter and oils for meat that you likely dont use at home. i generally tack on an extra 200 cals for that stuff i cant 'see'. sometimes more, depending on what it is.

Side dishes can be dangerous territory because there can be so much in it thats not seen.

Keep the foods simple, and it will keep estimating things simpler.

scale will jump up due to higher sodium intake, even if you are within your calories.

truly, i would pick and choose which invites mean the most. what are the things that are special? What are the things that are ordinary and you can do any time? maybe on a week when there are not any special events? Just because you are invited to something every day does not mean you have to GO to something every day. that would be exhausting.

I have a pretty healthy social life but:
1-) I do not do all of my socializing over food. Game nights, hiking, walking, horse rental trail rides, movies, etc. are part of it.
2-) even when food is included it is not always a MEAL - going out for coffee is a thing where you can skip the food, sometimes it's wine and I have _a_ glass.
3-) when I DO go out for a meal, if it's happening more than once in a while I go 'salad/chicken' and drink unsweetened tea or some reasonably healthy appetizer.

I'm going to tell you straight up though that I don't think always socializing via going out to eat is particularly mentally healthy. It's hard to associate food that strongly with good times and friends - to the degree it's all you do - and deal with weight loss. Part of weight loss is getting those things (food and fun/entertainment) to not be such a 1-1 connection.

Plan your meals for the entire day, and factor-in the activities.

I eat what I want. I try my best to go back and log what I ate - and choose something that I think matches the best...but ultimately if you are over eating by some amount for a wedding/party --- as long as that's not routine, it's not going to kill all the progress you've made.

If you are going to social gatherings of this sort every weekend...then maybe it might if you are overeating. You can try your best to stay within your calorie goal on the days you have these types of events (knowing that you will mostly likely be logging some 'equivalent' meal that is an estimate of what you ate) or you can maybe cut out like...100 calories from each week day to make sure that you're good to go on the weekend. But this is also just an estimate if you are unable to choose accurate entries from the database.

I do not 'not eat' at social gatherings --- but I will say I feel I have much more self-control now than I used to. I used to just continually snack...now I make a plate, and that's it.

wunderkindking wrote: »

I have a pretty healthy social life but:
1-) I do not do all of my socializing over food. Game nights, hiking, walking, horse rental trail rides, movies, etc. are part of it.
2-) even when food is included it is not always a MEAL - going out for coffee is a thing where you can skip the food, sometimes it's wine and I have _a_ glass.
3-) when I DO go out for a meal, if it's happening more than once in a while I go 'salad/chicken' and drink unsweetened tea or some reasonably healthy appetizer.

I'm going to tell you straight up though that I don't think always socializing via going out to eat is particularly mentally healthy. It's hard to associate food that strongly with good times and friends - to the degree it's all you do - and deal with weight loss. Part of weight loss is getting those things (food and fun/entertainment) to not be such a 1-1 connection.

I agree with that, but I also think that it can be not mentally healthy to routinely avoid social events with food because it's hard to resist, or hard to count. I see people here sometimes who start rejecting nearly all social events because of anxiety about food and weight. It's a question of finding a healthy balance, as with so many things involved with weight loss and (perhaps especially) weight maintenance. (I do like your 1-3 list, though.)

OP, to some extent during weight loss, and even more so now (year 5+ of maintaining a healthy weight), I try to keep straight in my head when something is a truly special (i.e. rare) occasion during which food is part of the specialness, vs. treating every social occasion as unbridled eating (even if that's how others treat the occasion).

If I go to a truly special restaurant, or have a holiday meal with family, I'm not frantically calorie counting to keep a deficit, or necessarily even keep to maintenance calories. I'm going to try to be reasonable, but I'm going to enjoy the special food.

On the other hand, if I go to a restaurant with friends as a regular kind of event once a week or whatever, I'm going to figure out something on the menu that I can order, and keep things reasonable. I may eat lighter earlier in the day, or something like that, if it makes sense and is needful.

In general, with restaurants (except that "rare visit to extraordinary place" thing), I'm going to be looking at the menu in advance, and figuring out what I can eat that I can enjoy, but keep calories manageable. (I'm vegetarian besides being weight-conscious, which adds an extra layer to that consideration. Especially when traveling and eating only at restaurants with others, I need to get rational veggie protein in the day someplace, somehow. Nutrition is important, too.)

IMO, a lot of foods at routine celebrations aren't very good, and that helps me. (YMMV, but for example those birthday cakes with heaps of vegetable-shortening frosting are kind of disgusting, in my world. So not worth the calories! If the event requires, I may take a piece, maybe eat a bite or two of the cake part, then sort of mess with it until I can gracefully dump the rest. Gotta have priorities for my calories, not wasting them on blah food.)

While losing, I'd think about how my net deficit was looking for the week, maybe eat closer to maintenance or even a above now and then (rarely), if it seemed worth it. If I was under for the week, I'd still lose weight, after all. Now, in maintenance, I eat a little (100-150 calories) under true maintenance most days, so that I can indulge a bit once a week or so, because that works well for me.

Balance. Balance of short term goals (the yummies, the socializing) against long term goals (health, including healthy weight).

You can figure this out. Calorie counting helps, or at least it helped me: It really clarified what indulgences were worth it, and when, as long as I logged *everything* while I was figuring that out. If, after the fact, some eating wasn't worth its calories to me, I made new plans about how to handle similar situations in future, test drove those next time, kept adjusting. That can work.

You don't have to figure this all out on day 1. You can work at it, learn, evolve it, succeed.

neanderthin wrote: »

People's eating styles are as diverse as there are people. Personally I don't pay any attention to what someone else is eating and don't care what peoples thoughts may be by observing what I'm eating. imo. If your worried about overeating, just try and eat less than your instinct tells you and you should be fine. The Japanese call it hara hachi bu which is eat 80% until full.

I've heard about this in an Ayurvedic context:

https://www.sleekgeek.co.za/80percentfull/

...There is a Japanese practice called “hara hachi bu” as a means to help regulate appetite and avoid overeating without the need to count calories.

...It’s believed to be an important factor in the attributed mindfulness and longevity of their population. Interestingly enough, some sort of calorie restriction practice is common throughout a variety of different cultures, other than the Japanese, such as:

• Ayurvedic tradition (eat until 75% full).
• Islamic Qu’ran guidelines (excess eating is a sin).
• The prophet Muhammad (describing a full belly as 1/3 food, 1/3 liquid, and 1/3 air – aka only 2/3 full).
• German expression (“Tie off the sack before it gets completely full”).
• Indian proverb (“Drink your food and chew your drink”).
• French expression (“I have no more hunger” as opposed to saying “I’m full”).

As a vegan, I've long been in the habit of eating before I head out to a reception or "free food" event because I assume there won't be much there that I can-- or will-- eat. And Surprise! I've never been to an event where there was a food cop asking why I had no plate and a Diet Coke from the bar.

For restaurant meetup kind of occasions, I'm in the habit of checking the menu in advance so I know what I can order beforehand. If there's not much of interest, I'll plan to eat before I go and then maybe order a side salad just to be social.