For most people, dining out is just part of daily life. For some people it’s part of their work such as entertaining clients or perhaps catching up with friends or family. Irrespective of the reason for eating out, restaurant meals will give you a huge obstacle to overcome if you plan on staying lean. Many clients have told me they tend to “fatten up” when travelling for work or on holidays because of their poor choices of eating.

Having experienced it myself, I thought it would be useful to share with you some keys to eating healthier and stay lean even while dining out at restaurants.

Again, irrespective of your particular choice of restaurant there are particular foods and drinks to avoid like the plague:

1. Deep fried foods (anything battered that got a scorching bath of trans fats).
2. Refined starchy foods.
3. Any sodas, juices, or other sugary foods.

If you can manage to avoid these foods, this eliminates the major food sources that do the most damage – trans fats, refined vegetable oils, refined starchy carbohydrates, and processed sugars.

So, this also means you need to skip the bread at the start of the meal (please ask the waiter to take it away, other wise you’ll eat it – you know you will), skip the french fries, reduce all of the heaping portions of pasta and rice that are often loaded on the plates as well.

Instead, go for s mall amount of meat with side vegetables, and a salad, asking for the vegetables or salad as a substitute for the typical french fries, pasta, or rice, that most restaurant meals usually come with.

Take a look at the typical difference this simple substitution makes between choosing smart and doing what most people do…

Most people will eat a meal out such as this:

• Burger or sandwich or burger
• chips or fries
• soda or other sweetened drink (and no, diet sodas are NOT healthy!)

A MUCH smarter alternative if you care about your body and health is this simple change:

• Burger or Sandwich
• Salad or veggies
• unsweetened iced tea or water (no diet drinks — unless you like to drink poison!)

These 2 simple substitutions save at least 400 – 900 calories every time you dine out (depending on drink refills and fries portion sizes)… AND you are cutting out the most harmful foods to your body as well by avoiding the evil trans fats and high fructose corn syrup from the fries and soft drinks.

Another side note: a little-known way to eat full portions of pasta, rice, and breads and actually get away with it without packing on the body fat is to make sure to schedule a high intensity full body resistance training workout (can be free weights or body weight training) before your scheduled meal time.

Sometimes it may be hard to fit the workout into your schedule right before the meal, but if you can, the meal can be your “post-workout meal”. After a high intensity resistance training workout, your body can handle a higher amount of carbs than normal to help replenish the muscle glycogen depletion you had during the intense workout.

A typical moderate intensity cardio workout will NOT cut it for this… it must be high intensity resistance training workout to deplete enough muscle glycogen to handle restaurant portions of carbs.

I hope these dining tips help you choose smarter and healthier for a leaner body next time you eat out. For more information on beating the bulge, go to Truth About Abs

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