Eating Out with a Plan

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I may have mentioned before, but as part of our “fat-to-fit” journey, my boyfriend and I are monitoring our daily calorie intake by using MyFitnessPal (check out his detailed review of the app here).

Tonight, I will be joining some other girl friends for a girl’s night out at Chuy’s, a Tex-Mex restaurant here in San Antonio.  I was a little anxious about it at first, since it is a Tex-Mex restaurant.  Tex-Mex was my biggest weakness when I moved to Texas, and the reason why I gained weight.  I couldn’t help myself around it, and always had to finish my entire plate!

But I have been following my plan very well and am determined not to stray from it unless it’s a delegated “cheat day.”

So how do you handle a night out to eat?

Make a plan, and stick to it!

Most restaurants nowadays have their menu’s available online, and many even have nutritional info as well.  It helps to look through the menu and know what healthier options they have.  If you already have a plan on what you’re going to eat beforehand, it’s much easier and takes the anxiety out of trying to pick something out at the restaurant.  If the restaurant’s website doesn’t have nutritional information, there are other places to find it.  This is where the MyFitnessPal app comes in handy for me, almost everything I’ve looked up has been in the database.  In this case, not all of Chuy’s menu items are in the database, but I only chose between the items I had a calorie count for.  Tonight I will be having the veggie enchiladas with the mexican rice and refried beans, and I will only eat half of my plate for a total of 315 calories, which leaves me 397 calories left of my daily limit for whatever drinks I choose (and alcoholic beverages tend to run high in calories).  What helps me is asking the server for a to-go box right away, and putting whatever I plan not to eat in the box and under the table, where I can’t see it.  If it’s on my plate, I am more likely to nibble at it until the entire plate has been consumed.

Most of the struggle is self control.  In going to the Tex-Mex restaurants in San Antonio, I would always devour the chips and salsa that they give you prior to the meal, sometimes eating up to a whole basket on my own before I received my meal.  And I never had leftovers.  At restaurants like these it’s easy to fill yourself up with the complimentary chips and salsa, especially when they’re bottomless and everyone around you is scarfing them down.  Or overindulging yourself in that big plate of appetizers that someone decided to get for everyone.  The biggest challenge is to exercise self control.  Go in with a plan, and try not to deviate from it.  It will be a challenge for me tonight to stay away from the chips and salsa, but I am determined to stay with my plan.