The Beginner’s Guide to Restaurant Eating - 5 Practical Tips for Healthier Eating on the Go

When you’re on a diet, does walking into your favorite restaurant make you feel like a recovering alcoholic walking past the bar?

The embrace of familiar smells. Good memories. Peer pressure.

It’s hard to want to be good in the face of such delicious flavors and a smiling waiter.

While eating out doesn’t make it easier for you to lose weight, there are practical ways to create a healthy meal at almost any restaurant.

How to stay in control of your health when you eat out

If you’re trying to lose weight, you will face two common enemies when you eat out. Perfection and the status quo.

  • Perfection demands, well...perfection. No mistakes.
  • Status quo whispers “why change. You’re here, enjoy yourself.”

Your defense against these two foes is the idea of “better”.

You might not always order the best choice on the menu but what if you make a better choice? What would happen if the next five times you eat out you practice one new healthy habit?

This guide will give you five beginner tips to try so you can experiment with a better and healthier habit the next time you eat out.

Let’s get started.

5 practical tips for healthier eating on the go

  • Order entrees that put you more in control. For example, when ordering Mexican, try ordering fajitas. You’ll be more in control of how weight loss friendly the meal is because you can dial up the high fiber veggies and beans and dial down the cheese or steak, which don’t contain any fiber.
  • Try treating the meat as a condiment. In large amounts, meat can sabotage your weight loss goals. At many restaurants, meat plays the feature role in most menu items. A way to make room for more broccoli, carrots, refried beans on your plate is to think of the meat as a condiment or the side dish.
  • Order from the sides. If you’re not sure where fiber rich foods are on the menu, look under the sides dishes. Depending on the restaurant, it will vary on how weight loss friendly the sides are. But remember, a side of broccoli and cheese is a better choice than a side of cheese sticks.
  • Eat your calories. It’s possible that by your second soft drink refill, you’re closing in on the number of calories your meal should contain. Order water and enjoy eating your calories instead of drinking them. You’ll feel more full too.
  • Treat the menu as a vast list of ingredients. Many times it feels more polite to order the meals as the restaurant has prepared them. The truth is that if you scour the menu for fiber rich foods like broccoli, grilled asparagus, sweet potatoes or avocado, you can create a delicious new menu item that your table mates will wish they would have ordered.

Full Plate Living puts you but back in control of your health because you learn how to lose weight and still get to enjoy food.

You can take back control of your health when you eat out. You’re worth it.

And if you're ordering in from food delivery services like DoorDash or GrubHub, these same guidelines will still work! Click either of those links for a list of the latest discounts and promo codes from the services mentioned.

Full Plate Living is a small-step approach with big health outcomes. It's provided as a free service of Ardmore Institute of Health.

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