Eating right in a restaurant or cafe is not an easy task. Asking the waiter about the calorie content and ingredients of each dish is often useless. We have compiled a few rules to help you avoid overeating, eat fast food healthy and diet anywhere you eat.
Start easy
If you often have to eat away from home, then it is better to start lunch or dinner in a restaurant with snacks. Let it be a vegetable salad or soup. Firstly, they are lower in calories than pasta or risotto, which you are probably going to order.
Secondly, this will fill your stomach and cheat your appetite a little – most likely, after the first course, you will no longer want a steak or a burger. Third, vegetables are just good for your health.
Divide
Takeout food, especially Chinese noodles and other fast food, is large in portions and high in calories. Frankly speaking, you do not need such an amount of food – a half will be enough to fill up. No matter how much you promise yourself to eat only a part of the dish, in the end, there is not a trace of it on the plate.
There are several ways out of the situation, for example, you can ask the waiter to put the portion into two containers: eat one now, and leave the other for later. Alternatively, you can invite your nutritionally and health-conscious friend to share this lunch for two.
More fiber, less carbs
Many fast food outlets offer self-catering, providing a selection of ingredients that you can use to make a salad, wok, a sandwich, or burrito. It can be extremely difficult to deny yourself an extra portion of sauce or an extra piece of bacon. However, we insist that it is necessary to pull yourself together. Add a couple of lettuce leaves, some cucumbers, a couple of tomato slices or extra corn or beans. Finally, replace mayonnaise and ketchup with sour cream or olive oil.
Choose wisely
The main rule of healthy eating in fast food is to choose the lesser evil. Let’s say in the battle of a slice of pizza against a double hamburger, the first wins, and a wok with seafood will definitely lose to a sandwich with chicken breast and whole grain bread. Your task is to minimize risks and choose the least harmful food.
By the way, you can eat a burger without a bun or eat only the bottom one, and then you will consume fewer carbohydrates.
Give up sauces
French fries are salty and fatty (and tasty) in themselves, so taking an additional sauce is already an excess, which will only add calories to a not very healthy snack. The same goes for everything else.
Sauces are always high in calories and harmful, especially if they are not made on your own from the quality and proven ingredients. It is better just to give them up.
Order a dessert last
The waiter’s tricky question about a dessert should rather be answered with a proud “no, thank you” or, in some cases, “I will make a choice later.” Do not forget that at the end of the lunch you may simply not want anything, and the previously made order will no longer be canceled.
