Addicted to RestaurantsAre you addicted to restaurants? So are lots of Americans. What used to be a "treat," going out for dinner, has become more common that cooking at home, and we think we're better off? Think again. Restaurant eating, fast foods and highly processed foods are turning us into a nation of tubby's. It's time to take back control of our waistlines.
You choose where you eat, and you choose what you eat. Here are some suggestions to begin to make better choices.
Restaurants Exist to Make a Profit
The bottom line is restaurants exist to make a profit. They pile on
extra butter and rich cream sauces, caramelized sugar toppings, cheese sauce, double-deluxe, new improved, and whatever they can do to make food so enticing, so delicious, we just cannot resist. Fine for an occasional splurge, but not everyday fare, and herein lies problem.
Extra Value Meals
McDonalds started trend by offering slightly larger portions for a bit more money, and every other food establishment quickly followed suit. Extra value they called it. Who wouldn't order a bit more for only pennies? Today nearly every restaurant, fast food or sit down dining, serves gigantic quantities that boggle mind. There is usually enough food served for two, sometimes three meals.
Reading in Restaurant Confidential (get a copy of this book and read it until it sinks in), calorie count in typical restaurant meal is so staggering it ends surprise of why obesity is rampant and on rise. Cheese fries with Ranch dressing are listed at having over 3,000 calories and 217 grams of fat (91 of them saturated). That's an entire day's worth of food, and it's considered an appetizer. Most people don't just eat cheese fries either, so add in rest of your day's calories and you end up with far more than you may realize.
Anyone who eats out regularly (at least once a day) is likely consuming closer to 5,000 calories a day, which easily explains their being overweight.
Getting Calories Out of Restaurant Food
Unless you mentally make it okay to pay good money for very plain foods, you're not likely to solve this puzzle. Here are a couple of painless ideas you can put into action at restaurants:
1. Just say NO to super sizing. The size you ordered is already too big. Stop super sizing and you'll save money (see How to Save Money and Lose Weight).
2. Skip bread and rolls served with most meals. Most family restaurants still serve a bread basket with your meal. Unless it's a fresh baked loaf, or some special bread, just skip it. You don't need to fill up on ordinary bread when you're paying good money for a meal - just push it away - it's not that good. You can do it, if you want to - it's not that hard to simply choose not to put a roll on your plate. Try it, just once and see if you don't walk out of that restaurant feeling strangely powerful.
If you can't skip rolls, at least skip butter. That's right. Eat it plain. Bread all by itself is good enough.
3. Stop ordering drinks with your meals. I stopped buying soft drinks many years ago when I realized they are a huge cash cow for fast food restaurants. For pennies, they sell you a squirt of syrup and soda water and act like they're doing you a big favor by only charging you $1.29 for a giant 64 ounce soda. Start saving those dollars. If you take meal home, just don't get a drink, and if you're eating it there, ask for water, or at least switch to diet drinks. Never drink "fat pop."
5. Trim visible fat and skin. You really love skin - of course it tastes good, it should, it's pure fat. Do you want to get leaner, or do you want to eat fat? You choose. I never eat chicken skin, and never eat visible fat hanging off a steak, good taste or no. You have to decide what you want more, second's worth of pleasure of a yummy taste, or a lifetime of carrying around an extra 40 lbs?
