If restaurants are where you get your daily bread, soon you might need to pull up a larger chair for your blossoming buns! Studies have found that those who eat out regularly (at least four times per week) end up consuming nearly 300 more calories a day than those who eat out less frequently. It’s not surprising. Many restaurant entrees have 1,000 to 1,500 calories, and that’s not even counting the bread, appetizer, drink or dessert. Not only are we dealing with gargantuan portions, creamy sauces, gratuitous use of butter, oil and salt (’cause that’s what makes everything taste so good and keeps the customers coming back for more), but we’re also looking at a buffet of potentially hazardous ingredients like MSG, trans fat and high fructose corn syrup. The more you eat out, the more you’re playing Russian roulette with your waistline–and your health!
If you’re a frequent diner, try sharing your meal with a friend, ordering an appetizer as the main course, or asking for a doggie bag that you can take to work for lunch. Just can’t resist that double fudge Kahlua cheesecake for dessert? Halve your cake and eat it, too! But here’s the smartest waist-trimming tip I can possibly give: Once in a while, stay home and cook! I really and truly believe that the more you take the time to prepare your own meals, the more you take control of your own health. That way YOU control what goes onto your plate and into your mouth, and you can limit the sugar, sodium, trans fat and MSG that can add blubber to your body and subtract years from your life. Try planning meals ahead of time. Make a plan, Stan! Prepare meals on Sunday that can be frozen and eaten for lunches and dinnners through the week. When you have no clue what you’re going to eat during the day, that’s when you make the worst food choices, often out of desperation, grabbing whatever’s convenient, be it from the hot dog stand, the Chinese food joint, or the drive-thru. Next thing you know, you’re trying on plus-sized pants and filling a prescription for cholesterol-lowering meds!
I predict we’ll be seeing the art of cooking making a huge comeback as more and more people realize that preparing their own meals is the ticket to good health. Besides, cooking from scratch is fun, fun, fun! (What do you expect a cookbook author to say?)
2 responses so far ↓
1 Sacred Suzie // Jun 5, 2008 at 11:05 am
It is so true Janet! It’s one of the reasons why I rarely eat out. The other is from watching Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. *shudder* I like knowing what’s in my food and how fresh everything is, not to mention clean!
It’s still hard though, seems that even though I cook and bake everything my metabolic rate never changes. I’m sure that has to do with my activity level but having fibromyalgia makes that really tough. I’m working on it though, with the help of your recipes. My next amazon purchase is going to be your latest book. I have your others and they’re falling apart!
I know you didn’t win the banana bread challenge but I still think it’s a winner recipe, it looks so good. I’m going to try that soon, it looks like a huge winner to me. Genius baking Greta! It’s so hard to bake low-er fat and you do it so well. Thank you for that.
2 patty // Jun 8, 2008 at 6:25 pm
And with gas prices going up so much, eating at home makes a lot more sense, too. It is so much cheaper to cook meals than to eat them at restaurants, even at cheap fast food places. Plus, my husband and I have discovered that typically home made food tastes so much better and fresher than restaurant food….
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