Going on a diet is not only tough because you must have the discipline and the mental toughness to follow the plan. It is also difficult because somehow, you have to do it even when you are in Lakeland restaurants, trying to treat yourself for a job well done.
After a grueling week of endless paperwork and seemingly limitless amount of stress, you deserve a treat. But treating yourself always involves eating out and experiencing being served at once instead of doing your boss’ every bidding.
What happens then when you are in a restaurant and you opened the menu and there were no healthy meals available for you to order?
Why are you in this restaurant, in the first place? If you are truly on a diet, you should have checked out the restaurant menu before going there. It should not come as a surprise to you that the menu has nothing below 800 calories in it. Now, that’s a problem because you haven’t prepared. If you know about the menu and the dishes available, you could have planned ahead.
Either go to another restaurant (when you are already seated) or treat the meal as your cheat meal or be really smart and trick the chef.
Order the least complicated dish
Why, you ask? Complicated dishes would not allow you to improvise or change anything.
An authentic ramen, for example, would be hard to “personalize.” How would you, after all, change the way the broth was made when it came from a pork shoulder that simmered for more than a day? How could you replicate that taste, that umami? What you should do is to order something that’s a little basic—grilled meat, vegetable salad, blanched seafood, etc.
You can ask the chef to make these healthy. On grilled meat, the chef should not use butter but olive oil instead. On the vegetable salad, the chef should avoid using lettuce because that only contains water and no nutrients. Also, hold the dressing. On blanched seafood, the sauce should be olive-oil-based and not cream-based like saffron cream, for example.
Ask for more veggies
We know you’re paying a premium price for that one-pounder steak but you would feel the worst for eating something that’s not in your program.
Though you’re paying for the meat, you should probably ask the server to put more vegetables on the sides rather than the meat or the gravy. Sure, you’ll lose money in value but the reward is that you won’t ever have to feel guilty about cheating on your diet.
You’ll get to try the food, taste a sumptuous meal, get protein from the meat, and stick to your diet plan at the same time. If that’s not a win, I don’t know what else.
Cheat your way into dessert
Sure, there’s no way you’re not gaining a few more pounds after eating a slice of dark chocolate cake but you can be smart about it and not sacrifice a whole diet program for a dessert.
First things first: choose a fruit-based, flourless dessert sans the whipped cream. If you’re going for a fruit-based dessert, it would be better to choose sour fruits rather than sweet ones. Mangoes would be high in sugar, for example, so turning them into desserts would basically be almost sugar-based, too. Choose sour fruits or fruits that are rich in vitamins and minerals.
Avocado would be a good alternative for the chocolate in the chocolate cake. If the restaurant isn’t offering any “healthy” desserts, you can probably lessen the impact on your body by sharing a piece of dessert with a friend and removing the whipped cream, sugar dome, candy sprinkles, etc.