Advice for Eating Out

Eating healthily doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy a meal at a restaurant with friends. Of course, it can be easy to overindulge in such situations, but there are a few simple guidelines that you can follow to try and adhere to your nutrient goals as much as possible. 

The first thing I would suggest is actually to write most social engagements off as ‘cheat meals’, enjoy the social time, don’t feel guilty and don’t worry about practising damage limitation, we will discuss cheat meals in more detail in the section below.

There is a popular adage “out of discipline comes freedom” this is the approach I would suggest you take with regards to your dietary intake. I say this because if you can cultivate the discipline to always follow the plan when you intend to, you are able to enjoy true freedom to engage and eat socially because 80/90% of the time you’ve followed the program as planned. However, if an average week for you has plenty of slip-ups and a lot of the wrong food when it comes to eating out, it’s just going to be an extension of damage limitation.

The exception to this would be for someone that needs to travel, eat out or entertain frequently, past about three times per week I would suggest that damage limitation might be the way to go.

The best thing to do when eating out in order to minimise any negative effects is to focus on the protein and fat content in meals and aim to avoid the simple carbs as best as possible.

Other tactics that will work will be not to have a dessert as it will almost always be simple sugars. Additionally, it is a good rule not to drink calories either, focusing on the meals.

Fitting a Meal Out Into your Plan: 

• Generally, it's the carbs in a cheat meal that will be the issue. If it's a pre-planned meal and you can make adjustments to your menu around it, try to keep the carbs low in the early part of the day in the run-up to your meal. 
• Once you've had the cheat meal you can fast the following morning, pushing the time of your first meal back a few hours.
• If possible, try to time the meal to be after a workout, even a short sharp one. This allows your body to utilise the sugars more effectively. 

Here are some other broad guidelines to practice which may or may not apply to your personal food preferences:

• Choose meat with less fat e.g chicken breast, steak, pork tenderloin and lean mince over chicken legs or pork belly
• Choose sweet potato over white potatoes
• Avoid white rice, pasta and bread  – choose wholemeal/brown where possible
• Choose baked over fried foods
• Vegetables are high in carbohydrates but low in calories so they are a better choice than pasta/rice/bread. 
• Healthier fats include oils, avocados, olives and nuts so these would be the best choices.