How to Eat Out When You’re On a Diet
The following article is an excerpt from my Online Coaching Resources Library that is for my paying clients, but it’s a very popular question and one that I would like to make available here to help my readers out as well.
So you’ve been meal prepping, tracking your calories, and following your diet like a champ and seeing great results, but then the dreaded day arrives:
- Your friends call you up and ask you out to dinner
- Your boyfriend or girlfriend wants you to go out on a date
- Your coworkers invite you out to lunch and you forgot to pack yours that day
Your hands get sweaty, your heart starts beating faster, and the anxiety sets in.
What are you supposed to do?
Are you going to wreck your diet? Is all of your progress going down the drain? Are you never going to be able to eat out like a normal person again?
The answer is no!
In this article, I’m going to be giving you my top 10 tips on how to eat out while still staying on track and making fantastic progress.
#1: Don’t Stress It
The first thing that you have to do is stay calm.
For a lot of people, the idea of going out with friends, family, or your partner when you’re following a nutrition plan causes a lot of anxiety.
You might think that it’s going to wreck your progress or undo all of your hard work for the week, but if you do things right like I’m going to outline in this article, that is not the case at all.
We work out and eat right to IMPROVE the quality of our life.
And I don’t know about you, but enjoying meals with loved ones is part of having a quality life.
Our diets don’t have to be perfect 100% of the time in order to see results.
I and tons of my clients go out to eat and still make amazing transformations, so this is not something that you need to stress or feel guilty about.
If you do things the right way by following the tips in the rest of this article, then you can too.
Let’s take a look at how.
#2: Hit Your Calories and Protein
There’s a very important concept that you need to understand when it comes to Nutrition, and that’s the concept of calories.
You may think that if you don’t eat super clean, you’ll gain weight or screw up your progress. But that’s not necessarily true. This in and of itself can cause some anxiety when you know that what’s on the menu isn’t exactly the “healthiest” stuff out there.
As long as your calorie intake for the day is under control, then it doesn’t matter if you eat pizza or chicken breast or broccoli*. You will not gain weight.
Calories are the #1 most important factor of any successful diet because your total daily calorie intake is what will determine whether you gain weight, lose weight, or stay the same.
In your nutrition program, I have set your daily calorie targets according to who you are as an individual and what your daily life and workouts look like.
As long as you are sticking to this amount, then you have nothing to feel guilty about for going out to eat or having something that isn’t in your regularly scheduled meal plan.
The second most important thing to do is ensure that you are hitting your target protein intake. Your body needs protein from your diet since it can’t make all of the protein it needs to stay healthy, build muscle, and recover from your workouts. Protein also has the added bonus of helping making sure that you are full and satisfied from your meal, so getting enough here is key.
Now how do you know how many calories and how much protein is in your meal? Let’s take a look at the next tip.
#3: Look Up the Nutrition Info (Ahead of Time If Possible)
Most restaurants these days have their nutrition facts posted on their website, and some of them even have it posted right there on the menu.
This is great because all you have to do is look at how many calories and protein you need and then find the option on the menu that satisfies those requirements.
In general, it’s better to underestimate how many calories are in a meal than to overestimate, so if you have 700 calories to spare on your plan and a meal on the menu is listed at 800, then you’re totally fine staying a little bit under.
Restaurants aren’t going to give you the exact meal 100% like the one that was used to determine the nutrition info. The portion might be a little bigger, they may have used a little more seasoning, and they may have added a little extra butter or oil.
Remember: restaurants are in the business of making your food taste delicious so you leave a happy customer, not helping you hit your calories and macros on the dot. For this reason, if you really want to be super strict with it, then I would factor in a 10-20% multiplier to whatever is listed on the menu just to be safe. So if a meal is listed at 700 calories on the menu, I would assume that it actually has 770-840 calories instead.
But what if there’s nothing really good on the menu that fits within your calorie budget? Let’s address that now:
#4: Get a Workout In
On workout days, you are going to be burning more calories than you would on a rest day. So putting a meal out on a day where you’re working out is going to give you a bigger calorie budget to work with.
It’s for this reason that I make a distinction between workout days and rest days in your nutrition program.
So if you know that you’re going out to eat with friends, try and make sure that you’re hitting a workout that day so you have more calories to spare. On average, this can make a difference of 200-500 calories depending on your size and what workouts I have listed for you.
Plus it’s extremely satisfying to know that you just had a great workout and are going to enjoy a nice meal afterwards. Which might just inspire you to hit it a little harder in the gym and make some gains.
#5 Put It On a Refeed Day
Even better, you can put this meal on a refeed day.
A refeed day is a day where your calories are set to maintenance (the amount of calories you would need on that day to maintain your weight) or just slightly above.
This can be helpful for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is that it allows you to have a normal calorie intake for the day and have the ability to go out to eat or have a nice home cooked meal without having to worry so much about how you’re going to fit things into your calorie totals for the day.
You might only have 2000 calories on your normal training days, but on a refeed day, you might have 2500 calories to work with, and that can make a big difference when it comes to your options.
The typical standard is to have a refeed day 1x/week on a training day, but if something comes up and a buddy wants to meet up or there’s a special occasion, there is nothing wrong with throwing in an extra day.
Remember: We are in this for the long run, and quality of life is super important, so we have to be like water and adapt to the circumstances around us.
#6 Adjust Your Calories for the Day or Week
You can even take things a step further and adjust your calorie breakdown for the day or for the week.
This is a bit more of an advanced concept, so I recommend that you check with me if you’re unsure how to pull this off correctly.
The idea is simple: You take calories from one meal(s) or day(s) and move them to another.
For example, let’s say that your typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner is 600 calories. But it’s date night and you want to have more calories come dinner time. So you take 100 calories away from your breakfast and lunch and add them to your dinner so that now your dinner is 800 calories.
Easy, right?
Another example for doing this on a weekly level: Let’s say that you know that you have a dinner coming up on Friday, and you don’t want to adjust your meals for that day like the example above. Instead, you can take 100 calories away from your meals from Monday through Thursday and add them to your dinner on Friday.
Make sense?
Remember: Calories are king, and it’s about the weekly average that matters. So you have a little bit of leeway with regards to how you want to allocate those calories across the week.
The nutrition guidelines and sample meal plans I give are there for a reason based on what I determine to be the best course of action for you to take, but you do have some flexibility when it comes to things like this.
Again, I highly recommend that you consult with me if you are unsure about how to do this. And if doing so starts to become a consistent trend, then I recommend you let me know so that we can revise the original plans so that you aren’t having to change things up all the time.
It’s also very important that you don’t take this idea to the extreme. If you are living off of protein shakes and celery just so that you can go on massive binge fests and have an entire pizza and box of wings to yourself, then that’s a problem. This only works if you do it modestly.
#7 Opt for Healthier Options If You Can
Just because you CAN have something on the menu doesn’t mean that you SHOULD or that you HAVE to.
One of the common trends that I see from clients is that they go out to eat with a set number of calories and order something “taboo” off of the menu, only to find out just how underwhelming the meal is, wishing they had gotten something else.
For example, 3 slices of pizza might run you 1000 calories, but for 1000 calories you could also get an 8oz steak, loaded baked potato, and a side salad. Which one do you think is going to fill you up more and be more nutritious?
In general, it’s still a good idea to eat somewhat “healthy”, and there a lot of super simple swaps that you can make to get the most of your meal.
- Grilled meat, not fried
- Steamed, not sauteed
- A side salad, not a loaf of bread
- Dressing on the side, not drenched in more than you need
- Lean steak, chicken, or seafood, not ribs or fatty steaks
Simple things like these can save you a lot of calories and help make your calorie budget stretch even further.
This applies to restaurants, too. Do you have to go get fried Mexican food or could you just go to Chipotle instead? Do you need to go to the Chinese buffet or could you get a healthy steamed meal from a cozy Chinese cafe instead? You get the idea.
If for whatever reason you don’t know what the nutrition info is for something, then there’s some simple rules for thumb to use:
- Stick to lean proteins
- Fill up most of your plate with vegetables
- Eat extras sparingly
- Don’t eat until you’re full. Only until you’re satisfied.
#8 Limit Your Options
Just because you’re out to eat doesn’t mean that you have to eat an appetizer and dessert on top of your main dish.
This can be a slippery slope. Be content with your main plate and don’t feel the need to go all out to make the most out of your trip or sample everything that’s at the table.
Research shows us that the more options that you have available to you at the table, the more that you will eat, even if you aren’t hungry. So limit your options and you will limit the extra calories too.
#9 Be Careful With Alcohol
Many people are surprised to find out how many calories are you in your favorite drinks, especially mixed drinks like margaritas or certain cocktails. These can easily eat up 300-400 calories or more which might be half or more of your meal!
To top it all off, alcohol lowers your inhibitions which can make you more likely to say screw it and order that dessert or eat more than you really wanted to.
Alcohol is fine in moderation and can be compatible with a fitness lifestyle, but you must remember to keep track of it in your calories and be aware of the effects that it has on you.
Your average glass of wine or beer will run you about 150 calories, so it can be an easy addition to a meal if you’re in the mood for it, but if it starts to affect you negatively, then it may be worth leaving it out all together.
#10 Be Mindful
The last tip here is to be mindful of your experience when you’re eating out.
Eating out with friends or family is every bit as much about the time you’re spending with them as the delicious food that’s on your plate.
Chew your food thoroughly, savor every bite, and don’t keep eating if you feel stuffed. Learn how to listen to what your body is telling you. Enjoy the moment, and you won’t look down at your plate wondering where all the food went and wanting more because you weren’t ever mentally “there” to begin with.
Conclusion
And there you have it. Those are my top 10 tips of How to Eat Out When You’re On a Diet.
If you have any tips of your own, I’d love to hear them! Drop a comment down below.
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