Tips For Eating Out While Losing Weight

Unpredictability can be one of the hardest roadblocks in your weight loss efforts as birthdays, family gatherings, holidays, and meetings are all usually centered around food in some way, and you’re probably not going to expect to see any chicken breast or cooked vegetables at these events. So my goal with this quick article is to give you some helpful tips on how to still enjoy eating out and taking part in various get togethers without losing progress.

1) Plan ahead of time

Go into your food app of choice and try pre-planning your day ahead of time. You don’t even have to be 100% with everything you plan, but having a set structure for your day, especially leading up to an event will make everything so much easier in the long run. A common problem many face with social events is overeating, which is really easy to do in the context of alcohol, friends/acquaintances, or other distractions. If you pre-plan your day to include a high protein snack/meal not long before the event, your hunger going in will be much lower, allowing you to still enjoy the food, but not feel so hungry that instead of eating 6 slices of pizza, you’ll just have 1 or 2.

• Have something like a protein shake, protein bar, or some greek yogurt before a social event. I promise it’ll make a world of difference with your hunger levels!

2) Go in with a checklist

If you’re going out to eat at a nice restaurant with a couple friends, give yourself a checklist, in order of importance of what you’ll be ordering.

• #1 A lowfat protein

• #2 A large serving of vegetables

• #3 Anything you want

Just like with tip #1, overeating is really easy under the context of social gatherings. So if you start your meal with a protein and a vegetable source, two things will happen. 1st, you’ll feel way more full by the time dessert comes around, allowing you to eat reasonable quantities. 2nd, you’ll feel way better with a belly full of protein and vegetables vs something heavy and greasy. And because you’ll feel better with the added satiety, making good decisions will be much easier.

• You might end up not even ordering dessert which is also a huge win for your wallet!

3) Give yourself realistic expectations

If you end up going over your calories, guess what? Who cares?? If you end up going a little over your calories for the day, you’re not going to all of a sudden gain a ton of weight and lose all of your hard work. A couple hundred calories above your maintenance is not going to do any significant damage.

It’s surprisingly common that we give ourselves these really strict expectations that we’re going to be 100% on point with everything and anything less means we’ve failed. This is more common than you think, but let me ask you this - what did you fail? Was there a test? Last time I checked, your health is not a pass/fail grade. Your health is the sum of ALL of your actions taken throughout the course of your life.

If you took that one birthday party where you ate an extra 2 slices of pizza, and you zoomed out to look at the entire timeline of your life, you’ll see that that once instance is so insignificant compared to everything else, that it barely holds any weight in the grand scheme of things.

Having a set plan going into a social event can be a viable tool that can make sticking with your calories so much easier. Either have a serving of protein beforehand or have protein during the meal, if possible. And when I say “have protein”, I don’t mean just eating a single egg. I’m talking about 25 grams or more. A couple ounces of meat, meat substitute, or a protein shake can all make this feasible.

Those are 3 tips that you can use when going out to social events. Though the context here falls under being in a calorie deficit, these tips can still prove useful to anyone who isn’t actively trying to lose weight. If you’re trying to bulk, pre-planning your day to make sure you’re getting adequate protein while also incentivizing a small calorie surplus can lead to greater results muscle-wise, compared to just eating everything you see via dirty bulking. And even if you’re not focused on building new muscle or losing bodyfat, having some level of consistency in your routine is a common trait many who maintain their progress long-term all share.

Hope these tips help!

Talk soon,

-R