How to maintain a healthy diet when eating out

Do you ever find yourself struggling to maintain your healthy diet when eating out with your not so healthy friends?  Sometimes after a good week you may just feel like giving up and eating that mouth-watering pepperoni pizza or those crispy fries. Find out how you can resist unhealthy temptations and continue to eat a nutritional meal.

What is a healthy meal?

Healthy eating for me is eating a meal which doesn’t include unhealthy sugars, processed food, lots of trans and saturated fats and food which is fried. How you view a healthy meal can depend on whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian or your on a specific diet.
I’m convinced that a healthy meal should include some of the following:​

• A drink which isn’t pop, chocolate or alcohol based. E.g. Water,Green tea, Tea.
• Some form of fruit or vegetables, you should aim for 5-7 a day. E.g. A salad or fruit pot (Although fries are potato, they don’t count).
• A source of protein which isn’t fried. E.g. Fish, Meat, Eggs, and some dairy products.
• Some foods containing starch. E.g. brown rice, whole wheat pasta, brown wholemeal bread or other wholegrain varieties.

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Being faced with difficult food decisions

I’ve been in plenty of situations before when eating out which have made me hesitant about what I’m going to eat. Often the decision of whether you’re going to eat healthy is difficult and sometimes you can be faced with the choice of eating what you’re craving or sticking to your plan. Whether you’re eating breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack; try to think beforehand what type of foods you are going to eat and which ones you’re going to avoid. It’s a good idea to look at the menu before arriving, if you know where you’re going to be eating.

Once you’ve arrived at where you’re eating, try to remember the list of what you want to eat and don’t want to eat. Think to yourself, that you want to be different from your unhealthy friends. Also by eating the unhealthy food the taste will only last for a few minutes so afterwards when it’s gone, you’ll be left with the feeling of regret and defeat. If there is no decision of a healthy option, perhaps eating before you go out or afterwards would be better. If you really need to eat, you could ask who you’re with if there’s a possibility you could eat somewhere different. If you don’t like any of those options, you could just eat a large amount of healthy sides or ask if the chef can make you something else (I doubt you’ll be faced with this option).

If you're feeling pressured by the people you're with to eat a certain type of food, which you know is unhealthy and they're trying to convince you by saying ‘just one can’t do any harm’, stand your ground by explaining that you want to stay healthy. If you don’t fancy giving your friends a long winded speech about why, you could just say you’re allergic to the food. 

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Things you can think about

When I’m eating out with my friends or family, I like to think of things which will help me to think positively when choosing what I’m going to eat. For example:

• Am I really going to feel satisfied by eating this?
• Is there anything unhealthy about what I’m eating?
• Is the situation avoidable and can I make it healthy?
• How am I going to feel once I’ve finished my meal?

 
Just remember that if you do choose to eat unhealthily that sometimes it can become difficult to stick to your plan and not to get worked up about the decision you made. Once you’ve eaten unhealthy, there is no use continuing to eat unhealthy throughout the day/week. Restart and work even harder on resisting your temptations. Thinking “there’s no point in eating healthy for the rest of the day, because I just ate some fries” is the equivalent to thinking “I just dropped my phone on the floor, I’ll just keep dropping it until it smashes”.
I hope that my tips and advice have helped you to reconsider what you eat when eating out in future and can help you to stop making unwise decisions and start making the healthy choices which you won’t regret.