Want tips to eat a healthy diet when dining out? www.reneeheigel.com In this video, Renee Heigel, Holistic Health Coach shares seven, REAL actionable steps you take when eating outside the home to get you more self esteem, willpower and weight loss results through holistic nutrition. Use these 7 tips for a healthy diet outside the home and feel better about the choices you make when eating and learn new things along the way! Don’t have time to watch the entire video?
**Video Timeline**
1:00 Action Step #1: Plan Ahead – know what you’ll eat before you go out
2:26 Action Step #2: Don’t finish everything, anticipate left overs for tomorrow
2:50 Action Step #3: Focus on what you get to have
3:52 Action Step #4: Choose a menu that avoids heavy, fried, greasy and processed food
4:17 Action Step #5: Never show up really hungry
4:53 Action Step #6: Bring a healthy appetizer
5:20 Action Step #7: You choose the restaurant/menu
Follow these 7 steps and turn your dining out experiences into a more pleasurable, healthy and fun time versus stressing about what to eat, overeating and the self criticism to boot!
Hi everybody, it’s Renee Heigel here and welcome to our Love Yourself Naked Blog and I’m talking today about eating when you’re away from home. So whether that’s going out to dinner or whether it’s going to someone’s house, how do you do that and still maintain a really healthy lifestyle because of course, we all want to eat out and enjoy ourselves and socialize and that’s part of the fun, part of this experience of new food and having wine and eating. Enjoying food is really a passion and pleasurable thing and it really needs to stay that way. So how do we maintain this?
I have seven keys today that I want to share with you. When I’m recording this, it’s actually almost the 4th of July so for those of you who are realizing that this is probably upon you but you can apply this at any time you go to a party or you go to somebody’s house or there’s holidays, etc.
1. So the first thing is to plan ahead and really thinking about what you’re going to eat when you get there. Now granted I know you don’t know what’s always on the menu, you don’t know what’s going to be served at the person’s home, but what you do know is pretty much the staples and you also do know what you like and what’s going to nourish your body.
So if you have any idea before you go, then it’s going to serve you in such big ways. So when you get to the place and you go in a restaurant and you open up that menu and now you’re just searching for items on that menu that are going to fit into this set-up already container of what it is you already plan to eat, there’s this rule that I like to use. I picked it up from nutrition school called the 80/20 Rule or the 70/30 based on what it is you want to do and that is this: 80 percent of the time I eat really healthy and 20 percent of the time I can eat what I want. So if you follow that on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, as just your rule of thumb for life, it’ll be wonderful.
So if I have this 80/20 rule as my philosophy which, of course, I do, I know that later on in my day I want to have a glass of wine, I want to have some dark chocolate, and I want to indulge a little bit in that, then it’s completely okay but knowing that is already planned ahead in the schedule so to speak, then I’m not going to eat the white carb bread in front of me when I go out to dinner because I want to save myself so to speak for the wine and dark chocolate.
So that’s how you plan ahead.
2. Don’t finish everything. The standard American diet on average gives us so much food and this is of course when you’re going out to eat. You don’t need to eat all of it. Take some home and eat it the next day. Have some leftovers. If you’re going to somebody’s home, then take a little less than you would think and try really to expand your pallet to try new things.
3. Focus on what you get to have. I can’t stress how important this one is. As a great example today, I took my son out to lunch and we went to this little Irish pub in a downtown area and we sat outside and it was wonderful and I ordered this spinach salad and he ordered fish and chips with coleslaw and granted, he’s almost three and so he’s eating and having fun with his food. And I took a bite of his fish which was good but I was trying to get all the breading off of it because that’s how it came and I was setting that to the side. And it tasted great but for this brief moment, I was like, ‘oh that looks better than my salad,’ and then it hit me and I literally – if you have to, shift the way you’re sitting and thinking.
Because then I looked down and I have this awesome spinach salad with granola and blueberries the flavor of it was one of the best salads I’ve had in a really long time honestly and about appreciating what was in front of me and on my plate versus focusing on what I didn’t have. That’s very important.
4. Choose a menu or choose something whether you’re at someone’s home or you’re going out that is going to support you and that includes vegetables and whole grains and fruit and you’re drinking a lot of water. So in essence, you’re focused first on adding in as much of this stuff as you possibly can and then you don’t feel as bad about indulging on whatever it is you want to indulge on.
5. Never show up really hungry – one of my biggest secrets. I make a green smoothie every day which I hope you do. It’s not maybe feasible for everyone to do every day, but I always make enough where there’s a little left over so I can have one later in the day if I need to. And one of the reasons that I love having that is if I go out to eat or I go to someone’s home, I never want to show up hungry because then we become ravenous and we’ll just eat whatever is in front of us and then everything foods so then you can feel good when you show up and glowy and proud of yourself and then you’re going to be less likely to eat junk.
6. Bring a healthy appetizer. Of course this is if you visit someone’s home. Even if they tell you not to bring anything; if you’re not sure what they have, always bring something that you know you can eat like the go-to thing. So if there’s nothing there that’s good for you, you can’t complain because you didn’t take the action to bring something yourself so bring something yourself that everyone will love as well as you. There’s plenty of recipes out there and a ton on my website.
7. The last thing I want to share with you is to pick the restaurant and sometimes we just go with the flow and say, ‘you pick it,’ and this is part of this whole Love Yourself Naked approach. This is really about stepping forward and owning and standing for what it is that we want. And of course, you can’t always pick the restaurant but if you can, don’t pass it up. Take the opportunity to find new places and eat at some new wonderful, healthier places that have delectable food. I ask you to take action on this immediately. That is really what this is for so don’t waste this stuff and just think about it; take action and use it today, use it tomorrow, and use it over the course of the weekend.
Have a wonderful time and I also want to share with you that we have Winning the Sugar Game and the 18-Day Love Yourself Naked Challenge just around the corner. Both of those programs and I want to see you on Pinterest. I want to see you on Facebook and Twitter and I want to stay connected so please find me over there and we’ll see you next week. Have a good day! Bye!
