Tips on Dining Out

Submitted by Stella Morgan on July 12, 2007

One of the hardest things to do when you are on a diet is to eat out. Why? Dining out means a lot of temptations from numerous delicious dishes wherein you might consider quitting your diet just to enjoy the food. But it does not have to be that way. It is still possible to stay on your diet and enjoy the dishes that they serve during dining out.

Here are some diet tips before you embark on this extraordinary dining experience.

Choose a dish from the menu for appetizers. You can even get a small salad.

This is one way you won’t feel left out and tempted to pick out from your partner’s plate if you still have something to nibble on.

It does not mean that if you are given a bottomless pasta dish, you really have to go bottomless. Settle for the amount of pasta that is enough to fill you stomach, but not to the brink of bursting.

Decide only on one entrée and if you think that you have had your fill, then stop eating. You don’t have to finish everything that they put on your plate, in spite of what you were told when you were a child.

Know what the best type of cooking for you is.

This is to ensure that you are able to strictly stick with it. Healthy ways of cooking poultry is through steaming, roasting, poaching, boiled, baked, or grilled. These types taste a lot better and are healthier than that fried chicken you see from your neighbor’s table. Also choose the loin or flank part of the beef if you choose to have it.

If in case a part of your food is cooked through deep frying, you can suggest to the waitress to modify your food and make it boiled, roasted or broiled. They rarely turn down a request except probably if you want them to do very complicated procedures.

Avoid, by all means, all types of creamy sauces, foods cooked or wallowing in oil, and butter, breaded dishes, battered and batter-dipped dishes, dishes with the name Alfredo attached to it and the most favorite sauce especially for chicken dishes, gravy.

Another way to limit what you eat is to ask the waiter to wrap up half of your food or dish for you to take it home. In this way, you are only limited to that much amount of food for the evening. Just resist the temptation of eating the other half of the food when you get home for the evening. Place it in the fridge at once. This will hopefully hinder you from eating it since you still have to heat it up, or it is just wishful thinking? Always keep a copy of takeout menus so you would know what healthy foods these restaurants offer.

Avoid eating at buffets unless you have an iron will power or the food does not taste that good. It is very easy to lose control of your portions especially if the buffet offers around fifty different dishes and you really want to sample each because each is a favorite of yours. The more choices of dishes that these restaurants give you, the bigger the tendency for you to eat a lot.

Lastly, if you really want to eat a little bit more on dining in a restaurant, try to eat smaller meals during the day, at least just enough to have something in your stomach because if you become too hungry, you will end up overeating during dinner time and starting your diet all over again.