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Eating Out and Weight Loss
By WLR Dietitian
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Q: I eat out a lot, mainly in connection with work.
However, most of the meals in the restaurants I go to seem to
be laden with fat. What do you suggest?
A: Eating out can be tricky if you’re trying to lose weight
as unfortunately, many chefs tend not to consider the needs of slimmers or healthy eaters when they’re designing menus!
Having said that, it is still possible to eat out regularly
without blowing your
calorie allowance or undoing all your
hard work.
Plan in Advance
It sounds as though you tend to know in advance when you’ll
be eating out, so start planning as early as possible and put
aside some extra calories each day, which you can then spend
on your meal later in the week.
Extras
It’s often all the little things that pile on the calories
when you eat out – a bread roll with butter or flavoured oil,
olives marinated in oil, side orders of fries, oil-based salad
dressings, cream with dessert or coffee and after dinner
mints, for example.
Avoid all these extras and you could save
up to 1,000 calories to start with, without even trying too
hard.
Cooking Methods and Ingredients
You should also aim to steer clear of dishes that are
deep-fried or include pastry, rich sauces, cream or loads of
cheese – they all pack a high
calorie content.
Ordering
When ordering your meal, don’t be afraid to ask if the chef
can adapt a dish to suit your personal needs – after all, it’s
what all the celebs do! This might be as simple as requesting
that a sauce be served in a separate pot so you can add as
much or as little as you want, asking for extra vegetables
instead of potatoes, enquiring whether your steak could be
grilled rather than pan-fried or requesting that a salad comes
without dressing.
Alternatively, if you’re feeling brave, you
could even try asking for something that’s not on the menu –
for example, if you can see that the fruit salad includes
melon, you could always try asking for a slice of melon to
start with, even if it’s not on the menu as a starter.
Courses
Don’t feel obliged to go for the full three courses, either
– if you can get away with just a main course, so much the
better. Alternatively, ask for two starters and have one of
these as a main course.
Starter
Good choices to start with include
smoked salmon, prawn cocktail (ask for it to come without
dressing), vegetable or minestrone soup, melon, and tomato and
mozzarella salad (with balsamic vinegar rather than dressing).
If low-calorie options are in short supply on the menu, simply
order a side salad and have this as a starter.
Main Course
For main courses, don’t be fooled into thinking that veggie
options will automatically be lower in calories – that
cauliflower and broccoli bake might sound healthy but it will
almost certainly come with a rich, calorie-laden cheese sauce.
In fact, meat, poultry and fish dishes can often be the best
choices – a grilled lean steak with salad (minus the fries),
for example, may contain as little as 500 calories.
Pasta can
also be a good option providing it comes with a tomato sauce
rather than a creamy one – and it’s guaranteed to fill you up
so that you won’t have room for a dessert.
Dessert
When it comes to dessert, fresh fruit salad or sorbets are
the best option. Most other puddings are laden with calories,
especially if they include pastry or cream and so it’s best to
give them a miss.
Unfortunately, cheese isn’t a better option
either – most restaurants will easily serve a minimum of 4oz
of cheese, potentially providing around 500 calories.
Drinks
Finally, keep a check on the amount you have to drink and
employ all the usual tricks. Opt for slimline mixers, add soda
water to wine and alternate between alcoholic drinks and
low-cal non-alcoholic drinks. And if it’s a business lunch,
use your hectic workload or an afternoon meeting as an excuse
for remaining tee total!
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