Are You Trying To Stick With A Healthier Eating Plan? If So, What Should You Do When You Go Out To Eat?

Restaurant Strategies When Dining Out

Keep this baker’s dozen of tips in mind next time you eat out to help you prevent mindless overeating:

• Avoid all-you-can-eat restaurants, especially if you’re likely to try to “get your money’s worth” with the sheer quantity of food. This style of dining is no bargain in terms of excess calories.

• If you do find yourself at a buffet, follow Cornell nutrition researcher Brian Wansink’s “Rule of Two”: When eating at a buffet, put only two items at a time on your plate. Even if you make repeated trips, you’ll eat a lot less.

• At the salad bar, fill your plate with low-calorie, high-fiber salad greens and vegetables, and be mindful of high-calorie add-ons such as fried croutons, cheeses, bacon, nuts, full-fat dressings or just about anything mixed with mayonnaise

• Steer clear of items that scream LARGE — giant, grande, supreme, extra-large, jumbo, double, triple, double-decker, king-size or super. Seek out portion descriptors that indicate moderation (and don’t let them make you feel you’re getting less value) — junior, single, petite, kiddie or regular.

• Never order anything with extra cheese.

• Instead of ordering a main course, choose soup and a salad, or soup and an appetizer, or an appetizer and salad. Or order a half portion.

• Order a side dish of steamed, roasted or grilled veggies. Eat your veggies first — the fiber and water in these will fill you up so you don’t overeat during the meal.

• Order a full-course meal, from soup to dessert, but split everything down the middle with your dining partner.

• Order and eat family-style, but request one or two fewer dishes than the number of people dining. Pass and share.

• When you’re looking over the menu, choose something low in fat that you don’t often make at home such as grilled fish or shellfish, roast duck breast (no skin), lean chicken or even rabbit.

• If a huge entree is set in front of you, slice off a reasonable portion and ask your server to put the remainder in a take-home container immediately — before you finish that reasonable portion and are tempted to start nibbling on the rest.

• Remember that most desserts have enough sugar, fat and calories for two or three people. Order only one treat to share among friends.

• Don’t drink your calories. No refills of sweetened beverages! Limit alcohol to a small glass of wine or a light beer. Do enjoy plenty of water with your meal.

Visualizing Portion Size When Dining Out

You’re not likely to bring a scale or a measuring cup with you to a restaurant, and you certainly don’t want to dine with someone who does. But there are still easy visual ways to judge how much food you’re consuming during your restaurant meal.

Oversize restaurant plates can fool you into thinking you’re eating reasonable portions. Here are a few simple ways to determine if there’s too much food on your plate for a single meal:

Meat, Poultry and Fish
One hundred grams, or 3½ ounces, is considered a healthy, standard serving size for most meats, poultry or seafood. That’s about the size of a deck of cards, a computer mouse or the palm of your hand. When ordering shrimp, keep in mind that five or six large (not jumbo) shrimp equal the standard serving size.

Starchy Sides
For pastas, rice, mixed grain or potato dishes, a serving about the size of a man’s fist or a baseball equals about one cup. Keep those serving sizes to the size of a tennis ball, which equals about ½ cup.

Salad Dressings
The standard serving size for salad dressing is two tablespoons, or one ounce, which is about the size of a pingpong ball or an ice cube.

Vegetables and Salad Greens
As long as your veggies or salads aren’t cooked in oil, covered with cheese sauce or dripping in dressing, you don’t need to worry about maximum serving size. In fact, few of us get enough of them.