Eat out and still lose weight

When we were around 13 years old, we read an article in a magazine about how to eat when out to stay skinny.

They suggested eating a salad and getting “The SORBET” for dessert. That sorbet just got stuck in our head all these years. Who orders sorbet?

That’s a highly sadistic suggestion.

But what can you do, if you want to lose weight, enjoy life and maintain some social life, without eating sorbet for dessert?

The reality is that eating out can (and we even think should) be a part of a healthy lifestyle, as long as you don’t let it escalate into a wild bingeing party.

How do you do that?

It’s pretty simple. You need to make healthy choices that you’re happy with regularly. This then feeds into a habit of always making the right choice for the moment.

When you make the right choice for the moment most of the time – you stop feeling deprived, guilty and then stop bingeing and overeating (a common reason for not losing weight).

Related: How To Stop Overeating When Life Sucks

Now, let’s take a closer look.

1. Step one: Apply common sense

Eating healthy is not rocket science. People make it seem like it is, but it is quite simple.

Most people know fruits and vegetables are good for us. Gone are the days when this well-hidden secret was reserved only for the flat-bellied rich & famous.

What else do we know?

• Sugar = the devil
• Fried stuff is bad for us.
• Processed foods are bad for us.
• Too much red meat is bad for us.
• Eating too much is bad for us
• Whole foods are good for us (whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds)

That is all common sense.

True, some healthy foods are healthier than others, but if you’re honest, you probably don’t crave a green smoothie or a kale salad when you’re out.

Here are a few alternatives for real life that don’t suck:

• thin crust pizza with tomatoes & basil instead of thick crust + salami;
• a wrap instead of a burger
• a good old main dish salad
• sushi
• anything Asian, that is not fried (we love Thai curries – make sure they don’t use MSG)

As a rule, whatever comes with some fresh/steamed vegetables in it/next to it – better than options that have NO vegetables.

We always look at the ratio. How’s vegetable to other things? If that ratio is high, then we know, we're fine.

Sure, a thin crust pizza doesn’t have the highest ratio of tomato sauce and basil to cheese and crust. BUT it’s higher than for the other thing we might wanna eat – which is thick crust fat salami pizza.

Will you be the healthiest person if you eat like this all the time?

Honestly, no.

But the point is to make the better choice at the moment. This way you won’t let yourself get so hungry that you want to eat like there’s no tomorrow afterwards.

2. Step two: Be happy with whatever you chose

This step, while a little confusing, is VERY important.

It’s the idea that no matter what choice you make at the moment, it will always be the right one if you just let it be.

If you just let yourself do, without ANY regret or judgement. If you, with all your heart and mind, let yourself be happy with your choice.

This is huge, because this “feeling” leads to what you do next. You can either binge or you can make the right choice again.

We'll give you an example from recently.

A few weeks ago we were out of our comfort zone, because none of the lunch places we usually go to was within reach for our lunch break. We took a walk and discovered COUNTLESS lunch places.

It seemed quite overwhelming. Should we go for pizza, salad, a wrap or falafel?

Unlike other times, this time we didn’t let myself go crazy asking myself questions (out loud) like “Wonder if this place has good reviews”, “Wonder how much protein this has”, “What if it’s not good?”.

We realized all those questions were rooted in the fear that we could be making the wrong choice for lunch.

Yes, we've got problems.

And yet – we've done it a million times in the past. Overthinking something that should not even be a question.

Here’s what we thought this time: “Big deal. It’s just lunch. We're hungry and we need to eat.”.

We stuck to common sense and what we were craving at the moment and bought a falafel.

Was falafel the healthiest thing we could eat? No. It’s fried and it’s not a salad.

But we were craving some sort of warm wrap. Falafel was the better choice from all the alternatives.

Was this falafel a reliable we ever ate? No. But it wasn’t bad.

The point is: we enjoyed it. It was having something we craved and we were sticking to our own promises a reliable we could at the moment.

Result: we were happy with our choice.

We didn’t wonder whether we could’ve made a better choice or whether it was worth the calories, because we had decided – it was the right choice.

What’s interesting is what happened next.

After lunch we were full and we made the right choice (again) to not drink another cappuccino and to not buy cookies.

Instead we drank lots of water.

See if we had focused on the fact that this falafel wasn’t a reliable, we would’ve probably tried to fix this “MISTAKE” by choosing something “better”, something to make us feel “happier” afterwards.

In the same way – if we had chosen a salad when we were actually craving falafel – later we would’ve bought something to even it out, like cake or sweets.

And if we had gone for a fat pizza, we would’ve felt so guilty that we would’ve said: “Ah we'll start tomorrow” and just eat whatever crosses our way.

Been there, done that. We know how this crazy cycle goes.

But because we were so happy with our choice, we didn’t need to make myself happy with more food.

So make yourself happy with your actions & decisions – not with food.

We hope this post helps you understand, that it’s safe to eat out, even if you’re eating healthy / trying to lose weight, it’s not about not eating or only eating salad, but about making a reliable choice for the moment.