Eating Out - easy tips on maintaining your weight loss

Though delicious, high-fat, high-calorie restaurant meals can make going out to eat a dieting hazard with one generous entrée often containing enough calories for a full day! Add in an appetizer, a glass or two of wine and maybe a bread roll and suddenly what was once easy weight loss becomes much harder.

Some restaurants make it easy for diners to know how many calories they consume by calculating and printing the caloric count of their dishes on the menu. Other restaurants have paired up with specific diet programs to offer specially prepared dishes that range from low calorie and low fat to low carbohydrate. Even fast food franchises have jumped onto the diet bandwagon, offering special menus and meal substitutions that allow diners to customize their meal.

Even if you're headed to a restaurant that poo poo's programmed diets, there are still a number of easy weight loss tips to keep in mind:

• First of all, never arrive at the restaurant feeling famished. It's counterproductive to starve yourself throughout the day in anticipation of a big meal. Eat at regular meal times, even if you do consume lighter foods and a smaller number of calories than usual to make up for a special dinner.

• Order a light appetiser such as broth-based soup or salad as soon as you sit down. This will help fill you up and reduce the chance of multiple visits to the bread basket.

• Restaurant portions are often enormous; order a second appetiser for your main meal or split an entrée with a friend. For example, Italian restaurants might let you order a half serving of pasta which you can pair with a salad.

• Replace the starchy serving that accompanies your entrée (such as mashed potatoes or a rice dish) with a second serving of vegetables.

• Even small changes can make a difference; leave one tablespoon of butter off your baked potato and save 102 calories and 11.5 grams of fat (including 7.3 grams of saturated fat). Say 'nay' to a dinner croissant and skip 200 calories, veto wine (125 calories) in favor of sparkling water. Choose vinaigrette for your salad instead of ¼ cup of blue cheese dressing and save 300 calories and an astounding 32 grams of fat!

• Keep in mind that it's okay to slip up, but know that in order to have your cake and eat it too you may have to put in that extra hour at the gym or push yourself to exercise when you don't feel like it. Remember, effective weight loss is about finding balance.

© The Pink Fridge Online Magazine 2008 - Weight Loss

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