by Mary Rose-Sellers

Created on: October 30, 2010   Last Updated: December 08, 2010

When we are trying to maintain a healthy diet, eating out can sabotage our efforts.  Every day we watch what we eat, how we prepare our food and control how much we eat.  But when we decide to go out to eat, due to lack of time for food preparation, can throw our healthy eating habits out the window.  How can we avoid sabotaging the good that we have so far achieved? 

First of all choose a restaurant that is known for using organic products.  These products are pesticide free and natural.  They are not processed like any other foods that are out there.

Ask the waiter on how the food is prepared.  If you don’t cook with butter at home but with olive oil, ask the cook to prepare the food with olive oil instead of butter.

Choose vegetables that are roasted or steamed, instead of fried.  Roasted vegetables retain their flavor better than being deep fried in lard or even vegetable oil.  It’s best to choose vegetables that are not dipped in any batter and then deep fried.  Not only you don’t taste the vegetable but you are getting all the fattening ingredients from the batter.  Have a baked potato without butter but with light sour cream on the side.  Most restaurants, nowadays, will offer light or fat free sour cream.  You can even avoid having sour cream altogether if you drizzle the baked potato with a bit of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  You don’t lose any flavor but you are gaining all the good omega 3 nutrients of the olive oil.

When having a salad, ask for the salad dressing on the side.  This way you don’t drown the salad in the salad dressing and you can control how much of the salad dressing you are eating by dipping each bite into it.  There are restaurants that offer fat free salad dressings too.  But you have to be careful of fat free salad dressings.  Just because they are fat free, it doesn’t mean that they have no calories.  In order to make up for taste on fat free salad dressings, sometimes they add sugar to it, to make it taste better.  So it’s best to ask for it on the side.  Or skip  the salad dressing altogether and ask for olive oil and vinegar.  This way, you can control of how much you want to put on your salad.

Have a roasted breast of chicken or fish instead of steak.  Chicken and fish have fewer calories than red meat and they are

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