Before we move on from the tracking element of this module it’s a good idea to cover one aspect of nutrition tracking that can really throw people off – tracking foods when eating out, either at a restaurant, or the home of a friend. This can have obvious implications for your nutritional approach because it can be somewhere on the spectrum between difficult to impossible to either make a decision on food, on portion size, quantify the calorie and macronutrient content of the meal, or all of the above.
The answer to this question, as always, is not straightforward because the context you are in will determine how much this should bother you. We’ll take each setting in turn to make it easier to present the approaches in a different way, but before we do we need to make one thing clear: before you go out for food, you need to make the decision of whether you want to stay on track at all or not. You won’t find this advice in many diet books, but truthfully as an adult you are able to decide to go to the local restaurant and have a go at the eating challenge along with your friends, or you are able to go for afternoon cream tea if you so choose and not worry about the calorie content of the meal one bit. You do have to accept that the calories count and that they will impact your progress, but you are able to decide whenever you like to accept these consequences and live your life the way that you want it. Provided you are able to take responsibility and accept that one meal can overthrow an entire week (or more) of dieting if you eat enough, and accept that you just might not lose any weight this week despite being otherwise adherent, then it doesn’t make you a bad person for sitting with your family and enjoying a 16” pizza.
But let’s assume you want to stay on track – how do you do it?
Eating at a friend’s house
- Are you ordering a take away or are they cooking? If it’s the former, simply make better choices. Chicken kebabs, tandoori meats, tomato based curries, black bean stir fries and many more imperfect but not bad options are available from most takeaways, so simply pick something that will roughly fit your usual approach and go for it
- If your friends are cooking, speak to them about your goals and see if they can be accommodating – can you have a smaller portion, can you have slightly more vegetables than everyone else, can your meal have the dressing/sauce on the side? If you’d rather not do this, you can at least get a gauge of what they will be making and use this information to create a ‘calorie sink’ as we’ll explain next. Most people are afraid to ask as they don’t want to put a friend out or awkward, but a good friend should understand your goals and be happy to help. That’s what friends are for right?
- Whatever you end up eating, through any of the above channels, decide whether you want to track it. It’s usually a good idea to do so, but if you don’t want to you could chalk this day up as non-adherent and leave it at that – at least it’s data, and this can be used alongside the ‘calorie sink’ method below
To track, you could either make a reasonable estimate of the foods you have eaten, ingredient by ingredient, make a reasonable estimate of the calorie content of the food simply by looking at the meal and ‘taking a stab’ or if ordering in look for a generic option to track on a food database (so if you have fish and chips, it could be possible to track a Wetherspoons fish and chips on MyFitnessPal for example)
Eating at a restaurant
- In many ways, this is easier. First look to see if you can locate a menu online and give yourself time to decide on what to eat without the pressure of everyone looking at you as the waiter stands and clicks his pen
- Next, just like you would in any other situation, make better choices. Lean meats, vegetables and minimally refined carbohydrates are the way to go. You may have to accept a little more oil, fewer vegetables and a few other more ‘flexible’ options than usual but do your best with what you have because this probably isn’t an everyday occurrence
- Don’t be afraid to swap things, or ask the waiter to leave certain things off the plate that you’d rather not be tempted with, or get added vegetables
- Opt for two of the following, as the maximum to consume – a starter, a dessert or some alcohol. This limits excessive calories
- Most chain restaurants have their nutritional information available, so check that out where possible and use the skills you developed around reading labels to help guide you. This can usually be found either online or in the restaurant