Whether you are sitting down to a Sunday brunch or a four-course dinner, navigating a restaurant menu can be challenging, especially if you are trying to eat healthily. Fortunately, dining out doesn’t need to sabotage your diet all you need are some simple strategies and tips for healthy eating out.

Eating out is part of life, whether it is a birthday party, a work function, or a weekend catch-up with friends food always seems to be involved. Not only is eating with others a great way to celebrate, but it can help you enjoy your meal more by nourishing your body and your soul. Although these meals should most certainly be enjoyed, you don’t need to throw all caution to the wind just because you are eating outside of the four walls of your own home! The good news is that you can eat out without throwing a calorie bomb into your diet plan, you just need to do a little damage control, so here are 8 tips for healthy eating out no matter where you go.

Tips for Healthy Eating Out

Here are some simple tips for making healthy choices when eating at a restaurant.

1. Pick the Restaurant

Whenever possible, try to be the one that picks the restaurant location. If you are able to pick the restaurant location yourself you can ensure there are options that meet your dietary needs and feel good about your meal choice. I suggest avoiding chain restaurants as much as possible and looking for local independently-owned restaurants, as you are more likely to get better food options. While traveling, websites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and OpenTable can help you find great restaurants with great food.

2. Look up the Menu Before

Regardless of whether you pick the restaurant or not, looking up the menu online beforehand is a great way to ensure you make a better meal choice. Most restaurants share their menus on their website or you can often find them on travel websites as well. You are far more likely to make a healthy meal choice when you are not distracted by the sights and smells of the restaurant and you can walk in confidently knowing you already have a game plan.

3. Focus on Whole Foods

This guideline applies whether you are eating at home or dining out, but it becomes especially important in restaurants. When looking at the menu, look for whole food foods in their whole format and minimize processed food items as much as possible. This means looking for vegetables, proteins, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, fruits, and healthy fats, and avoiding processed grain products (noodles, bread, wraps), deep-fried items, refined oils, and added sugars. For example, you are much better off choosing the chicken with baked potato and tomato salad over chicken fingers, fries, and ketchup. Same foods, different formats.

4. Consider Calories but Don’t Stress Over It

Calories are now available on many restaurant menus, and although it can be helpful to look at them, it can also be incredibly confusing if you are not considering the full picture. Because not all calories are created, even some of the healthiest options can be high in calories when compared to their deep-fried counterparts. For instance, a salad loaded with fresh vegetables and chicken can increase from 400 calories to 800 calories when you add avocado, cheese and dressing because fat, even the whole food forms, is rich in calories. However, this does not mean the 800 calories blooming onion is equally as healthy. It is always important to consider the quality of the ingredients and their cooking method, over the number of calories a dish contains.  The more whole foods you can get on your plate, the better it will be for you.

5. Ask for Substitutions

In this day and age, restaurants are becoming more and more accommodating to consumer requests, so there is no need to be shy about asking for menu substitutions. I am not suggesting that you alter your entire order, but simple requests like asking for double vegetables instead of fries, baked potatoes instead of mashed, salads instead of coleslaw, or fruit instead of toast can often be easily accommodated. Remember, you are paying for your meal, so as long as you ask nicely, you should get it the way you want it.

6. Order Before Everyone Else

When the server comes around to take your table’s order, be the first one to place it. When eating with others it is easy to get influenced by people’s food choices; before you know it you are saying the dangerous line “Ohh, that sounds good, I’ll have what she is having.” If you look up the menu before you go, decide what you are going to have, and place your order before everyone else, you will be more likely to stick to your game plan.

7. Forgo the Freebies

Although restaurant freebies like bread baskets, chips, or nuts can be tasty, for the most part, they are completely unnecessary. It is so easy to tell yourself “I’ll just have one piece”, and before you know it you’re on your second loaf of bread and half-full before your starter even hits the table. If you don’t think you can resist the temptation of the bread, chips, or nuts sitting on the table, simply ask the server to remove it or ask them not to bring it in the first place.

8. Chill Out

These tips for healthy eating out can be incredibly useful, but it is important to not put too much pressure on yourself every time you are at a restaurant. It is important to control the components that you can control, and not overthink the process too much. If you are eating out every night of the week, I certainly think it is more important to be mindful of your food choices so you don’t overdo it every time, but if you are eating out once a week as a special treat, enjoy the treat. Make the best choice you can with the options that are presented, and if you indulge more than you had planned know that it is not the end of the world. Your food choices don’t define you and there is no need to sweat the small stuff.

When it comes to improving health, food and exercise go hand in hand, as they are both vitally important tools in living well, feeling well, and improving longevity. However, it is important to understand that food and exercise are not a transaction, and therefore they should not be treated as one.

“I worked out today, I deserve this chocolate.”

“I ate too much last night, I need to workout today.”

“Today is a rest day, so I can’t eat carbs.”

“I need to run 20 minutes to work off last night’s pizza.”

The concept that you need to earn your treats, and work off your indulgence is just plain incorrect, and it is damaging to people, myself included. For many women (and men) the above statements are all too familiar. In fact, those little phrases used to echo in my own ears all of the time; “I was good this week, I can have ice cream”, “I was bad this weekend, I need to get a workout in.” When I was in my twenties this is exactly how I operated, I treated food and exercise as a transaction. I wanted to be fit and look good, so I set big goals for myself, and when I went overboard with food or exercise, I would try to adjust the “transaction” with more exercise or food.

In theory, it makes sense. If you burn a few hundred calories on the elliptical at the gym, you can eat a few more hundred calories, and if you eat a few hundred calories too many, you can simply burn them off at the gym. Although this seems like a completely logical thought process, it turns out that our bodies don’t work like a mathematical equation. Food and exercise are both essential for health, but they do not work to offset each other.

The Purpose of Food

Let’s get one thing clear, food is fuel, but it is not only fuel.  From a biological perspective, the purpose of eating is survival. Food literally makes our bodies function, as it is one of our basic primal needs. If you think of the body like a car, the food we eat does much more than fuel our gas tanks. The food we eat provides us with the nuts and bolts to hold us together, the oil to run our engines, the transmission to help us run efficiently, windshield washer fluid, air conditioning, traffic signals, and the list goes on. The food we eat not only provides us with energy, but it makes up our brains, hormones, and immune system. There are literally millions of different uses for the food we eat, in fact, every single cell in our body is made out of the food we eat.

The Purpose of Exercise

I’ve got good news for you, you don’t need to exercise. Yup, you heard it here first. You don’t need to go to the gym, you don’t need to go for a run, and you don’t need to try the latest fitness craze. The only thing you need to do is move your body. The reason that we “need” to exercise is that our lifestyles have shifted from extremely active to extremely sedentary. Instead of hunting for our food or working on the farm, manually washing the laundry, or building a fire, we now drive to work, sit at the office and watch TV on the couch. When people are looking to lose weight, they are compelled with the need to join the gym, but truthfully, this is completely unnecessary. You don’t have to join the gym, you don’t need exercise equipment or the latest fitness gadget, what you need to do is move. You can walk to work, you can garden, you can hike in the woods or you can swim in the lake. What you need to do is find a way to move that you genuinely enjoy, without feeling like it is punishment.

Food is not a Reward, Exercise is not a Punishment

The purposes of eating and exercise are two completely separate entities and trying to combine them is a dangerous game. In fact, when you really look at it, it’s quite silly. If you are being good to your body, by eating “good” food, then why would you need to reward yourself with a treat? Isn’t being good to your body reward enough? From a young age, we are conditioned to look at food as a reward. You do well in school – you deserve a treat. You win your soccer game – you go out for ice cream. Even as an adult, when things are stressful at work there seem to be more pastries and chocolates lying around the office.

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If you are being good to your body, by eating “good” food, then why would you need to reward yourself with a treat? Isn’t being good to your body reward enough?

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I want to make one thing clear, I enjoy treats, and think you should do, I just don’t want to use them as a transaction for exercise. I want people to have ice cream on warm summer days, I want people to drink wine at the party, and I want people to order their favorite pizza on a Friday night. What I don’t want, is for people to enjoy these indulgences only to feel guilty (literally) minutes later, and then feel the need to “work them off”. In fact, I need you to know that “working off your treats” is an impossible thing to do. You can not gain 10 pounds overnight from eating a pint of ice cream, and you can not lose 10 pounds the next morning by going for a run. The body does not work like that – it is physically impossible.

Your Food Choices Don’t Define You

Although the idea of labeling foods as “good” or “bad” may seem like a helpful way to guide our food choices, it does not set us up for success. The issue with defining foods as “good” or “bad” is that people allow their choices to define them; eat something “good” and you are being good, eat something “bad” and you are being bad. In doing so, we create a vicious cycle that people can’t escape; I ate a bad food, therefore I am a bad person, I deserve to be punished, so I need to go workout.

Eating a “bad” food does not make you a bad person, it just means you ate some food. Every time you eat something, you are making a conscious decision to understand the consequences (if any) of your choice. In contrast, going to workout does not make you a “good” person, or deserving of a treat. If you chose to exercise (or move your body) you are simply allowing it to do what it was designed to do.

Shifting Your Mindset

The idea that food and exercise are a transaction is very easy to get caught up in; ads remind us to look for food items with “only 100 calories” and fitness apps help us track how many calories we burned in our workout. Of course, regardless of where you are in your health journey, it is important to consider how much you are moving your body and what foods you choose to eat, but you do not need to compare them to each other. Treating diet and exercise as a transaction does not work because they are not a transaction. Food feeds your body, and it also feeds your soul. Eating mindfully with people you love or celebrating a special event with food nourishes your body in an intangible way. Moving your body is not about decreasing your body fat percentage, it is about thriving, living a life you love, and supporting your longevity.

The Bottom Line

So, you don’t need to count your calories, you don’t need to track your fitness and you don’t need to compare your food to your fitness. The way you treat your body is a representation of how you feel about your body, so you simply need to treat it with love.

The popularity of gluten-free products has grown tremendously over the past few years, and therefore the question of whether or not to go gluten-free is a popular one. An estimated 1 in every 100 – 200 people in North America have Celiac Disease, many of which are undiagnosed, and are unable to digest gluten, making a gluten-free diet very beneficial for many. However, when it comes to gluten-free diets, there are many things to consider; Are all gluten-free options created equal? What should a gluten-free diet look like? And how do you know if you should go gluten-free? To help provide my answers, here is my quick guide to gluten-free grains.

What is gluten?

Gluten refers to the proteins found in certain cereal grains’ endosperm, and it is composed of two main proteins; glutenin and gliadin. Although commonly found in wheat, gluten is also found in barley, rye, triticale (a grain that is a cross between wheat and rye), and some oats. When flour is mixed with water, it is the gluten proteins that form a sticky network that has a glue-like consistency to help provide shape to grain-based products. Gluten provides elasticity to dough making bread chewy, pizza dough elastic and noodles tender.

What are the concerns with gluten?

Gluten intolerance is one of the most common food sensitivity disease of the intestine, the most well-known being celiac disease. Individuals with celiac disease produce an abnormal immune response when breaking down gluten during digestion. The immune system of a celiac reacts negatively to the presence of gluten causing damage to the inner lining of their intestinal tract which decreases their ability to absorb nutrients, specifically iron, folate, calcium, Vitamin D, protein, and fat.

Although going gluten-free is not necessarily the answer to all of everyone’s health concerns, for many it can help. It has been suggested that even for those without celiac disease, gluten in the diet can cause inflammation in the body, disturb digestion, limit nutrient absorption, and therefore lead to other health concerns. This broad range of symptoms can include; weight gain, nutrition deficiencies, aching joints, depression, eczema, headaches, allergies, and chronic fatigue.

Gluten-Free vs. Free of Gluten

Whether a person has celiac disease or is concerned about gluten sensitivity, it is important to understand that there is a big difference in the way that you execute a gluten-free diet. Too often people implement a gluten-free diet by merely replacing their current bread, crackers, and granola bars with a gluten-free option, however, they are missing the mark. Although these food products might be “gluten-free”, they are just that, food products. Processed foods are processed foods whether they contain gluten or not, and can still be damaging to the intestinal tract and impact nutrient absorption. Swapping your morning cereal for gluten-free cereal, your lunch sandwich with gluten-free bread, and using gluten-free pasta at dinner does not mean that you are doing yourself any favors! Implementing a gluten-free diet in the most beneficial way means removing all processed foods, and when you need to use grains, opting for properly prepared whole grains, that do not contain gluten in the first place.

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Gluten Containing Grains

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Gluten-Free Grains

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Note: Oats are inherently gluten-free, however, the cross-contamination in production and factories cause gluten to be a concern. If you are looking to remove gluten, opt for certified gluten-free oats to ensure they are safe.

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The Impacts of Grain Preparation

Although the mainstream view of gluten intolerance is very black and white; you either have Celiac disease or you can chow down on bagels to your heart’s content, one might argue that there are many layers to this onion. Today, the way we grow, mill and process grains have changed dramatically from the way our ancestors once did. The wheat we grow today has been bred for higher yields and quicker returns, we no longer use traditional stone milling techniques for grinding flours and we no longer use traditional preparation methods, with long fermentation processes, for most of our grain products. The conventional methods for milling flours are more aggressive on wheat grains and destroy the germ which is the portion of the berry that contains its micronutrients. Grains contain a number of antinutrients such as phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, complex sugars, and gluten, that help to protect the grain, however, can they bind with minerals in the digestive tract to block their absorption. Therefore, grains require careful preparation to help break down these antinutrients, one of which is gluten, to help “pre-digest” the grains making them more easily digested and the nutrients more bioavailable to our bodies.  For instance, bread was traditionally baked with a natural sourdough starter to make the dough rise. This natural sourdough starter is formed by bacteria and yeasts that exist naturally in the air and grow and multiply on grains, creating active live cultures which cause the dough to ferment which helps to break down the antinutrients. Today, in conventional and large-scale baking processes, long fermentation with natural yeasts is no longer used. Instead, factories will use dry active baker’s yeast, which significantly shortens the fermentation time, so the bread can be produced quicker with less effort. The concern is that this does not allow microbes to break down starches and proteins to allow for easier digestion and higher nutrient absorption. When not properly prepared, grains products including bread, cereals, and baked goods can be very damaging to the intestinal tract.

I am not suggesting that this is the sole cause or the answer to celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, however, I think it is important to consider the manner in which we process food has a huge impact on its digestibility and nutrient absorption.

Unconventional Uses of Gluten

In addition to actual grain-based products, the additional and unconventional uses of gluten have increased our exposure to gluten multiple-fold. Due to its elasticity, gluten is now commonly used as a binder or a thickener in many processed food items, which only increases our exposure to gluten in its many unfermented forms. Everything from salad dressings to soup stocks, cheesecake fillings, and energy bars can contain added gluten.

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Common Hidden Sources of Gluten

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• Malt Vinegar
• Broths
• Imitation Bacon
• Imitation Seafood
• Marinades
• Meat Balls
• Meat Loaf

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• Processed Meats
• Sausages
• Seitan
• Soup Bases
• Veggie Burgers
• Soy Sauce
• Tamari

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• Energy Bars
• Granola Bars
• Candy Bars
• Salad Dressings
• Brown Rice Syrup
• Cheesecake Filling
• Supplements

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The Bottom Line

As with any food, it is important to consider that “one man’s food is another man’s poison”. Although a particular food might be considered “healthy” and work well for one individual, it might not work for another. For most people, without celiac disease, I typically recommend avoiding gluten in its unfermented forms and focusing on gluten-free grains as sources of carbohydrates in the diet; rice, quinoa, buckwheat, corn, and some oatmeal. If you are looking for bread, opt for a naturally leavened sourdough to ensure you are eating wheat in its fermented form. If you suspect an allergy or severe intolerance to gluten, contact a healthcare practitioner to set up testing.