Fitness, Health and Eating Out

Fitness Health and Eating Out

Social events and meals out at restaurants are a minefield for anyone on a diet or focused on a fitter, healthier lifestyle.

With a little prep and some simple rules-of-thumb, you can enjoy socialising to the max – without giving up on your hard-won physical gains. As you’ll see below, eating out with health in mind starts before you even leave your house.

Whether it is for business, entertainment or for a family birthday, eating out at restaurants is a fact of life. It can also be one of life’s pleasures. When you do it healthfully, you’ll be able to enjoy it all the more.

Eating Out and Fitness: Health Starts Before You Leave the House

Two separate ideas for preparing for that night out in a restaurant.

First, make sure you don’t arrive ravenous. Your eyes will literally be bigger than your stomach once those hunger pangs are in control. Studies show that you’ll choose processed, carb heavy foods when hungry, over the healthier choices.

Linked to this is the advantage of eating some leafy green salad or vegetables before you head out.

You get a double boost. Your hunger is reduced, helping you make smarter choices from the menu. At the same time, those greens lower blood glucose spikes from sugars consumed right afterwards. Sugars of course include rice, pasta, bread and potatoes which are rapidly metabolised into glucose.

Asparagus

Saying No to Free Bread

Restaurants bring you bread before you order for their own benefit – not for yours.

That sugar spike as the bread is turned into glucose makes you order more food. This is not hearsay, it is science.

It is easy to think that that bread (or rice crackers etc) would reduce your hunger when in fact the opposite is true.

Mindful Menu Choices for Eating Out Healthily

What you choose to eat is the single biggest factor for healthy meals out.

The risks of fried or processed foods are exacerbated, since you don’t know what type of oil they are fried in – or (importantly) how many times the oil has been reheated.

My strategy is to go for dishes with the fewest ingredients. For example, salmon steak, lean cuts of (preferably organic) meat and seasonal vegetables. Unless you are Keto, there is no need to avoid carbohydrates completely. Moderate levels of fries, white rice or breads will help you avoid that sugar crash (and might help you avoid dessert).

If you order extra side-dishes, why not make it delicious greens – for example asparagus or a Mediterranean vegetable mix? This will fill you up, without piling on the calories.

Selenium in tuna

Eating Out: Finishing Your Plate in the Optimal Order

There are many situations where your choices of dish will be limited.

If you are faced with what the boomer generation called a ‘balanced’ meal (ugh!), then you’ll need a plan B.

Here the order of how you eat the food from your plate can be switched.

Your goal is to reduce the blood sugar spike caused when the carbohydrates break down into sugar. If you eat those carbs first, that glucose spike will be huge. There is nothing to delay the metabolism of the carbs, and they all rush into your system at once. That is what triggers overeating and hunger when the inevitable crash comes.

Instead, eat green vegetables first and lean meats / fish – then the carb component of your meal last. Naturally, this does not need to be exact, just a little more veg to start and a little more carbs at the end.

Eating Out and Fitness: Contrarian Advice for Dessert

You might expect me to end with warnings about the destruction from pudding…

Nope.

I’m a big fan of indulging, with crème bule a personal weakness.

If you avoided carb-heavy and processed foods, ate some greens before you went out and avoided the trap of bread to stop you over-ordering, and choose smart single-ingredient options – you have already reduced the damage from eating out to your fitness massively.

For me, the promise of a delicious dessert can be a brilliant incentive to get all the other things right.

 

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