Managing your weight and eating out frequently can be difficult to navigate if you treat every outing as a celebration. If eating out is part of your lifestyle, you need to treat it simply like a meal. The risk of not doing this is putting on 85 pounds like the lady on the left.

Any meal can be adjusted in the kitchen. Don’t be shy about speaking up for your health needs. For example, my husband and I went on our Saturday night date this past weekend and we both ordered the fresh scallops. (After all, the server said they were just off the boat!) The general preparation involved a cream sauce. I asked if the chef could saute them lightly in lemon, garlic, and olive oil then do the same for my mushrooms. I had balsamic spinach as my second side and a green salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, oil, and vinegar on the side. My husband ordered the same meal, but with his chose the caesar salad, the cream sauce, and risotto which was heavy on the cream and cheese. Same meal, two different ways to eat it.

At the end of the meal, my cream-eating husband was uncomfortably full.  I felt completely satisfied. The idea of deprivation is purely mental and as you build enough positive experiences with the feelings you get when you eat healthy, you’ll want to keep doing it. In learning this, you can eat out as frequently as you want while maintaining your healthy weight. (The next time we went my husband made different choices.)

Bon appetit!