Eating out 101: Tips for choosing the healthiest dishes

While eating out at restaurants is a key feature of our modern lifestyles, it can also be a barrier to our health and the internal conflict is real.

Sure, a restaurant’s primary incentive is to please you — often through our primal tastebuds for fat, carbs, and sugar — but there are smart ways to navigate eating out so that it doesn’t become a setback to all the momentum we form in other parts of our lives.

Here's how to approach it.

Plan ahead

There are a few things you can do to plan ahead for dining out. For starters, to avoid coming in hot with a raging appetite, which can lead to over-ordering and downing lots of bread, have a healthy snack in the afternoon

Secondly, consider having a quick scan of the menu online as this can help avoid impulse ordering when deciding on the spot when your focus is on conversation.

Smart starters

• Fish: Raw (crudo, ceviche, sashimi, etc) or cooked (octopus, grilled calamari, etc)
• Meat: Raw (tartare, carpaccio, etc) or cooked (skewers, shish kebab, tataki, etc)
• Veggies: Tomato salad with burrata (skip the bread)

Mains

• Whole protein: Grilled, baked, or barbecued whole meat, fish, etc
• Sides: Always get a green salad and carefully select other micronutrient-dense vegetable sides (a good heuristic is to skip anything with potato in it)

Dessert

• Skip altogether: Avoid the double-whammy of pleasure-oriented meals while also spiking blood sugar and signalling (via insulin) your body to store the calories consumed
• Moderate: If we must (we can’t always deprave ourselves) then share a single dish among the table so that you limit the sweet stuff to a spoonful or 2

Alcohol

• Skip altogether: Avoid the double-whammy of ordering/eating tipsy (unleashing every impulse and desire) while also diverting the liver away from processing calories in pleasure-oriented meals and compounding fat storage (perhaps the pleasure of it too if we’re honest)
• Moderate: If we must (let’s be realistic) then consider alcohol as an accompaniment to the meal only; wait until entrees are served to avoid drinking on an empty stomach (dampening blood sugar spikes and delaying disinhibition cravings are blunted)

Deal with it realistically

Earn it

If eating out often is unavoidable (for work or entertainment), create an allowance for the number of meals per week that are pleasure-driven and be accountable to the healthy actions to earn it across the rest of the week.

Pay for it

Do a HIIT or a strength workout on the day of the booking so that your body and metabolism are better primed to process calories.

Process it

Go for a walk afterwards to improve blood sugar regulation, burn some of the calories consumed and improve sleep quality after a big meal (often later than normal).

General tips

• Don’t hesitate to ask for alterations; it’s a big unlock
• Skip bread and chips as a force factor to find healthier (and more interesting) options
• Nail the starters to set the tone for the rest of the meal (momentum is everything)
• It’s important to enjoy the experience as it is a restaurant after all but it’s also important to maintain momentum in our goals for healthy nutrition as the foundation of great health