Hi friends! In today’s episode, we are keeping with the healthy eating theme we’ve had going for the last few episodes and talking about how to make healthy choices when you’re dining out! 

Obviously, the healthiest choice is usually to cook your meals at home where you have more control over what ingredients are included, but it’s not possible to ALWAYS eat at home. Sometimes your schedule demands that you dine out and sometimes you just want to, which is great! I don’t know about you but I absolutely love the thought of someone else preparing my food, bringing it to me, and then cleaning up the mess, (Yes, please!) but sometimes when you’re trying to make changes to your health and be intentional about the food you’re eating, going to a restaurant can be a bit of a challenge. It’s difficult to know what ingredients are in each entree and it can be easy to feel like there aren’t healthy options, but usually, that isn’t the case!  

Today, I want to give you three easy tips for choosing a healthy option so you can enjoy your restaurant experience and not spend an hour staring at the menu! 

Now, before I get into the tips, let me just say this - you won’t always do these things. I won’t always do these things! Not every single meal has to be the healthiest choice. Sometimes, you want the splurge! Sometimes it’s cheeseburger night - go. for. it! Don’t take these tips as me saying that if you’re going to be healthy, you have to eat perfectly 100% of the time! It’s also important to note that obsessing and stressing over our food decisions is just as unhealthy as eating processed, junk foods - so we don’t want to find ourselves doing that!

When we fuel our bodies well the majority of the time and take the time to learn how what we eat affects us, we then have the freedom to go a little wild now and then! No, it wouldn’t be good to do that all the time or even every day, but every once and a while, it is totally fine! Our bodies have the ability to turn less than perfect food into energy and nutrients that we need when we are taking care of them and nourishing them the majority of the time.  

Okay, now that we cleared that up and you guys don’t think I’m some kind of kill-joy, :) let’s get into these tips! 

• Look at the menu before you go!

This can be really helpful if you know where you are going to be eating beforehand. It can feel overwhelming to get to a restaurant, especially with a group of friends or even on a date, and feel like you can’t talk to anyone for the first 15 minutes because you are intensely reading the menu. Most restaurants have their menus posted online, so it's so much easier to take time before you go to read over the menu and choose a couple of options that will be good for you and sound delicious! 

• Think about balance!

Eating a balance of carbs, protein, and fat with each meal is so important for properly fueling the body as well as maintaining stable blood sugar levels. This will keep you from having an energy crash as soon as you finish eating and will keep you full longer. When looking at the menu, choose entrees that include all three macronutrients. If the entree you want doesn’t have all three, you can always customize or add something to your order. Also, remember that things like salad dressings or other toppings (usually fats) will count towards having a balanced meal. 

Let me give you a couple of quick examples to make this a little more practical:

Instead of getting the normal cheeseburger and fries, to make it a healthier, more balanced choice, you could do a burger bowl or salad. Skip the bun and ask for your burger to be on a bed of greens, and then add all the toppings you want like onions, mushrooms, tomato, pickles, avocado, and sauces. Then have your fries on the side. By doing this you have a good mixture of fiber-rich veggies and other more starchy carbs, protein and some fat from the burger patty, and fat from the avocado and maybe from the sauces.

Another common entree option you can find almost anywhere is grilled chicken. You could do grilled chicken with rice and either a salad or other green veggie, but you will need to add in some fat. So again, avocado is a great choice or ask for some real butter or olive oil to drizzle on your veggies.  

• Get some greens in there, if nothing else!

We’ve talked about this before but the majority of us come nowhere near eating the amount of fiber we need in a day. An easy way to fix this is to add some leafy greens or other high-fiber veggies to every meal. Even if the entree you choose isn’t the healthiest, you can not only get a nutrient boost from adding on some spinach or broccoli, but also the fiber will help your body digest and process your meal more easily. 

• Bonus tip - get water! 

Unless you are specifically going to a restaurant for a specific drink that they serve, just go with the water! It’s free and will again help your body process and digest your meal more easily than if you were to drink something sugary. Instead of giving your gut and liver something else to “work on”, so to speak, it actually supports their natural processes.  

So there you have just a few easy tips to hopefully simplify making healthier choices when you’re dining out. It doesn’t have to be hard, and as long as you aren’t eating at restaurants most days of the week, you don’t have to stress over your choices. If you are following a more restrictive or elimination-style diet for a time, restaurant food probably isn’t going to be your friend or the easiest option, but by following these tips - especially the first one about looking up the menu beforehand, it is still possible to do. 

If you find yourself dining out more than you feel like you should or you want to, go back and listen to the past few episodes about meal planning and prepping ahead. This is going to be key to eating more at home, especially when your schedule is really busy - and whose isn’t? Right?! 

Alright friends, that does it for today’s episode! As a reminder, you can find my healthy eating resources, like my Meal Planning Guide, Meal Prep info, or my Healthy Kitchen Swaps Makeover Guide by clicking here.