Eat Out Eat Well

weight management strategies

Is Your Workplace A Food Landmine?

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Your workplace can be a major food landmine when you’re trying to eat well.

We spend a lot of hours at work — whether that means time at the office, at home, in the car, on an airplane, in a hotel, in a retail store, or anywhere else you conduct your business.  The challenges are enormous — especially in the face of ever-present food – a good deal of which is carb and fat loaded – and an environment which can range from fast paced, stressful, and overwhelming to boring or downright exhausting.

Using Food To Cope, Manage, And Procrastinate

All of this can push you into using food as a means of coping, procrastinating, or looking for energy to ward off fatigue.

  • Try to identify what you usually do when you’re stressed, tired, or angry.  If your usual action is to grab a cookie or candy bar try to manage your stress without the reward foods. Instead of turning to a high-calorie, high-fat trigger foods to calm your nerves or as a reward, try some healthy, stress-relieving practices like deep breathing and meditation — and make them your default.
  • Make a deal with yourself to work some activity into your workday.  Instead of using eating as an excuse to take a break, make taking a short walk – even if it’s around your office or to another floor — an essential part of your day. The quick walk will get you out of the immediate environment, let you blow off some steam, and burn an extra calorie or two. If you travel, walk in the airport rather than plopping yourself down in the food court or bar.
  • If you eat out or order take out for any of your meals, scout out the restaurants, delis, salad bars – or even your own workplace lunchroom.  Identify the meal choices that are the best for you and make them your “go-tos” so you’re not caught in the trap of being starving or too busy to care when you order.   Have you ever been so hungry that you throw your best laid plans out the window and end up eating a whole pizza followed by a piece of chocolate cake?
  • If you plan your route to work to intentionally pass your favorite coffee shop with the absolute best blueberry muffins — or find yourself using the rest room on the next floor because you have to walk by the vending machine with peanut M&Ms — think about changing your route.   Don’t taunt yourself with temptation. Do some thinking and planning.  If you’re going to have a snack, plan for it –  know what you’re going to eat and stick to your choice.  Contemplating your choices while standing in front of a bakery display or vending machine filled with candy or salty treats is a sure fire recipe for caving in.  Don’t deny yourself food – just make it good food.
  • It’s always someone’s birthday — or it’s a holiday — or someone has brought in leftovers from their kid’s party  or a recipe that you just have to taste.  By the way, the reason they probably brought in the leftovers is because they don’t want them hanging around their house tempting them.  Have a strategy for the inevitable food fest of leftover cake, pizza, and bagels. Perhaps allow yourself a once or twice a week treat.  Just don’t make the snack room a routine place to visit to scrounge for the leftover cake.
  • Install your own personal policy for bowl dipping —  you know – the dipping into the candy bowl at the receptionist’s desk, the jelly beans on your partner’s desk, the chocolates on the counter. Use whatever reason you have to – maybe think about all of the other hands – and where those hands have been – that are also dipping into the same bowl.
  • If your desk drawer filled with reward food that stares at you every time you open the drawer, aren’t you tempting fate?  See it — eat it.   Need I say more?

 

Do You Eat Out As Much As The Average Person In The US?

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The average adult in the US eats 4.8 meals in restaurants each week.

An online survey of 4000 consumers’ behavior found:

  • The most popular restaurant meal is lunch
  • 2.6 lunch meals are eaten out, on average, each week
  • The lunch meals are both take-out and restaurant dining
  • 1.4 sit down dinners each week are in restaurants
  • 0.8 brunch or breakfast meals are eaten out each week

How People Label Their “Eating Out” Preferences

  • Nearly 50% of the people responding to the survey call themselves “meat lovers”
  • 22% have a “sweet tooth”
  • 19% call themselves “fast food junkies”
  • 18% call themselves “health nuts”
  • 5% are self-described “vegetarians or vegans”
  • 35% describe themselves as “experimental eaters”
  • 25% call themselves “foodies”
  • 11% refer to themselves as “locavores,” or lovers of local food

Takeaways

It’s important to remember that this is a survey of 4000 people – done online — which makes it a survey of people who spend time online, who are willing to take a survey, and who eat out quite a bit.

That said – it seems that a lot of people are eating out a lot of the time.  If you are, too, consider building eating out into an overall eating plan so that you can continue to eat out, eat well and healthfully, and still manage your weight.

Do Restaurant Meals Sabotage Your Diet?

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Are you afraid to eat out for fear of “blowing your diet” or because you think there aren’t good choices to be had? Are you tired of hearing that you shouldn’t go to restaurants if you want to control what you eat?

Choices

You can choose to eat out and eat well. You are responsible for making good choices for yourself.

Your first choice is when you select which restaurant to go to (do you want grilled fish or a huge plate of pasta).  The second round of choices come when you’re inside the door and confronted with the menu, the breadbasket, and the portions.

Restaurant Meals

I eat out a lot.  After years of cooking for a very active family of five, I’m quite happy not to cook every night.  I actually find it easier to control my portions and calorie consumption when I eat out in restaurants.

I follow a number of unwritten guidelines that, over time,  have become habits.

I eat in the restaurant rather than ordering in or bringing prepared food home.  It is too difficult to eyeball portions when they arrive as full containers and it is far too easy to eat too much by finishing off the last bits rather than saving or tossing the leftovers.

Select Wisely

I pick my everyday restaurants carefully and I’ve developed relationships with the wait staff.   I certainly go to special restaurants on occasion and really enjoy the fantastic food – but that’s not my everyday fare. My “everyday” restaurants serve food that is friendly to my eating patterns.

They offer a range of lean proteins and vegetables and are amenable to swaps.  My local diner is so used to me ordering a side of spinach instead of home fries with my eggs that they bring it without my asking.  They make food swaps with pleasure – not with grumpiness.  I’m a good customer and ask very politely.

I don’t let the breadbasket even land on the table (if I’m eating with others it goes near them — my husband agrees with the breadbasket taboo).  Bread is way too difficult to resist when it’s staring you in the face and can add hundreds of calories before you get to the main course.

I usually drink iced tea, water, diet coke (yep, I like it), or a glass of wine.  These choices account for zero to around 120 calories for the wine (one restaurant sized glass).

If I do have dessert at an “everyday” restaurant, it’s berries in season.  If they’re not sweet enough I sprinkle a little Splenda on them – which makes my husband wince, but I find quite satisfying.

By no stretch of the imagination am I so controlled that I eat plain lean proteins and steamed vegetables all of the time.  Far from it – but for routine meals, I try to stay away from sauces, dressings, and sides of pasta, rice, or potatoes.  When I really “dine” at the finer restaurants, I deliberately choose  (not always successfully)  to limit either the number of courses or the portion size.  I attempt – again, not always successfully – to lay off the bread and control the liquid and dessert calories — often choosing either an appetizer or a dessert.

When I’m with other people who are ordering an appetizer and an entrée I often will order two appetizers instead — a practice that is so common that most waiters  don’t even blink an eye.  I find that if food is in front of me I’ll eat it – especially if it’s a lengthy meal.  The smaller the portion in front of me (appetizer size) the less I eat.  Still tastes darn good.

No Trauma

Don’t let the thought of eating out be traumatic.  Restaurants exist to serve you meals and it is up to you to choose which one to go to and what you will eat when you get there.

If you know you’re going to go for broke because you’re eating at a special place – or just because you want to – don’t freak out.  Eat and enjoy — you can always compensate by controlling what you eat earlier in the day or the next day.    Be careful about depriving yourself — you don’t want to feel so “cheated” that you end up raiding the fridge when you get home and chowing down on more calories than if you had eaten a full meal in the restaurant.

Is The Breadbasket Doing You In?

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Shiny Packets And Small Pots

It used to be only butter on bread – big slabs, small pots, or foil wrapped rectangles.  You can still find all of these – what would a diner be without those sometimes rock hard, sometimes soft and squishy, gold or silver foil wrapped butter packets?

Butter or Oil?

Olive oil for bread sopping and dipping is giving butter some stiff competition.  Olive oil arrives green or golden, plain, herbed or spiced.  It can be plopped down on your table, or poured with flourish from a dark tinted bottle.  Some restaurants offer a selection for dipping – and attempt to educate you about the variation in flavors depending upon the olives’ country of origin.

How Many Calories?

Do you eat more calories from one or the other?  Hidden cameras in Italian restaurants showed that people who put olive oil on a piece of bread consumed more fat and calories than if they used butter on their bread. But, the olive oil users end up eating fewer pieces of bread than the butter eaters.

In the study, done by the food psychology laboratory at Cornell University, 341 restaurant goers were randomly given olive oil or blocks of butter with their bread. Following dinner, researchers calculated the amount of olive oil or butter and the amount of bread that was consumed.

How Much Butter, How Much Oil, How Much Bread?

Adult diners given olive oil for their bread used 26% more oil on each piece of bread compared to those who were given block butter, but they ended up eating 23% less bread in total.

The researchers found:

  • Olive oil users used 26% more olive oil on each slice of bread compared to block butter users (40 vs. 33 calories)
  • Olive oil users ate 23% less bread over the course of a meal than the people who used butter

The olive oil users had a heavier hand than the butter users – for individual slices of bread.  However, over the course of the meal when the total amount of bread and either oil or butter was accounted for, the olive oil users used more per slice, but, overall they ate less bread and oil over the course of the meal.

They also took in 17% fewer bread calories:  264 calories (oil eaters) vs. 319 calories (butter eaters).

Butter, Oil, And Bread Add Significant Calories

  • A tablespoon of olive oil has 119 calories, a tablespoon of butter has 102 calories, one pat of butter has around 36 calories.
  • Butter and oil are all fat; olive oil is loaded with heart healthy monounsaturated fat, butter is filled with heart unhealthy saturated fat
  • Bread varies significantly in calories depending on the type of bread and the size of the piece
  • Most white bread and French bread averages around 90 to 100 calories a slice. Most dinner rolls average 70 to 75 calories each.

What’s Your Bread And Butter (or oil) Plan?

The bread and butter or olive oil pre-dinner (and maybe during dinner) ritual can create a real caloric bump without much nutritional value.  So many of us chow down mindlessly on bread and butter or oil before a meal – because we’re hungry – or because it’s there for easy nibbling.

Choose to eat it, limit your amount, or don’t let the breadbasket land on your table.  The choice is yours – just be mindful of the calories.

The “Power” Of Coffee

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Most of us recognize the energizing, wake-up character of coffee – but too often we forget its other “power.”

A Power Outage

Connecticut was hit very hard by hurricane Irene.  As I write this there are still half a million people without power and in an area like mine — a lot of homes have well water and no gas source — you may not have water, a working stove – or flushing toilets for that matter.  We have an abundance of trees and outside of my small town’s downtown area most of the power, phone, and cable lines are overhead making us especially vulnerable in any major wind, snow, or rain event.  We have no mass transit other than a Metro North spur line – which is still down for the count. In other words, it can feel like you’re disconnected from the world and functioning within your own little sphere.  Your lifelines become food, water, and your iphone or blackberry (if you can find a place to plug in your charger).

Coffee Shops Act As The Town’s “Water Cooler” And General Store

In my town of 20,000 we do have a Starbucks, a Dunkin’ Donuts and a handful of other coffee shops – and they have become the office water cooler, the town general store, the coffee klatch of times gone by, and the source of an electrical outlet and wifi.  Downtown has power so the coffee shops have power.

Thank goodness the post hurricane weather has been phenomenal.  So, what do you do – you get into your car where you can listen to the radio desperately hoping for an estimate for power restoration (which you don’t get) and go hang out in town at – where else – the coffee shops, or sidewalk benches, or restaurants (especially those with outdoor seating).

By far, the most popular places are the coffee shops.  Yes, the caffeine is a drawing card – but so is the conversation and sharing of war stories while you wait in the line that extends out the door onto the street.  Unshaven men and women without a stitch of make-up smile and converse.  Kids beg for donuts (and in most cases get them ‘cause their isn’t a whole lot of produce to be had  — and who could wash it and/or cook it, anyway).

The Golden Ticket

Our local Starbucks must be breaking all sales records.  It has the golden ticket.  Aside from coffee and bathrooms, it has outdoor space with tables, a lot of seating on chairs and retaining walls, and a major bonus:  wifi and for those in the know – outdoor electrical outlets built into the retaining walls. It is so crowded that you have to launch yourself in the direction of an empty space when someone vacates.

The amazing thing is that everyone is friendly and cooperative.  Tables are shared.  The Starbucks staff, overworked, has been as friendly as ever.  The coffee is flowing – but most importantly, the place itself has reverted to the general store of old – the downtown center – the water cooler in the office.  It is the place to share stories, to connect with humanity, to speculate, to rage at the power company and the cable provider.  It is the place to recharge your mind and to recharge – literally – your cellphone, iPad, and laptop!

So, for those in many towns and cities who sometimes protest the proliferation of coffee shops, or bodegas, or local bars or restaurants – think about what they offer.  It’s not only food and drink but the humanity and kinship that goes along with it – not only during crises but when you stop in everyday for your morning coffee – or your Sunday breakfast at the diner – or your burger and beer to watch the game.  For many of us, these places become part of out social structure – something that is heightened during times like power outages or critical events.

Time To Post

It’s time to get into my car, turn on the radio, drive into town hoping to spot a utility truck working on downed wires, go to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee and an update on power restoration (opinion, true or not), and stake a claim to a perch outside where I can grab on internet connection and post this online.