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Eating in Restaurants the New Addiction
By Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP
Are you addicted to restaurants? So are lots of Americans. What used to be a
"treat," going out for dinner, has become more common that cooking at home, and
we think we're better off? Think again. Restaurant eating, fast foods and highly
processed foods are turning us into a nation of tubby's. It's time to take back
control of our waistlines.
You choose where you eat, and you choose what you eat. Here are some suggestions
to begin to make better choices.
Restaurants Exist to Make a Profit
The bottom line is restaurants exist to make a profit. They pile on the extra
butter and rich cream sauces, caramelized sugar toppings, cheese sauce, double-
deluxe, new improved, and whatever they can do to make the food so enticing, so
delicious, we just cannot resist. Fine for an occasional splurge, but not
everyday fare, and herein lies the problem.
Extra Value Meals
McDonalds started the trend by offering slightly larger portions for a bit more
money, and every other food establishment quickly followed suit. Extra value
they called it. Who wouldn't order a bit more for only pennies? Today nearly
every restaurant, fast food or sit down dining, serves gigantic quantities that
boggle the mind. There is usually enough food served for two, sometimes three meals.
Reading in
Restaurant Confidential
(get a copy of this book and read it until it sinks in), the calorie count in the
typical restaurant meal is so staggering it ends the surprise of why obesity is
rampant and on the rise. Cheese fries with Ranch dressing are listed at having over
3,000 calories and 217 grams of fat (91 of them saturated). That's an entire day's
worth of food, and it's considered an appetizer. Most people don't just eat the
cheese fries either, so add in the rest of your day's calories and you end up with
far more than you may realize.
Anyone who eats out regularly (at least once a day) is likely consuming closer
to 5,000 calories a day, which easily explains their being overweight.
Getting the Calories Out of Restaurant Food
Unless you mentally make it okay to pay good money for very plain foods, you're
not likely to solve this puzzle. Here are a couple of painless ideas you can put
into action at restaurants:
1. Just say NO to super sizing. The size you ordered is already too big. Stop
super sizing and you'll save money (see How to Save Money and Lose Weight).
2. Skip the bread and rolls served with most meals. Most family restaurants
still serve a bread basket with your meal. Unless it's a fresh baked loaf, or
some special bread, just skip it. You don't need to fill up on ordinary bread
when you're paying good money for a meal - just push it away - it's not that good.
You can do it, if you want to - it's not that hard to simply choose not to put a
roll on your plate. Try it, just once and see if you don't walk out of that
restaurant feeling strangely powerful. If you can't skip the rolls, at least
skip the butter. That's right. Eat it plain. Bread all by itself is good enough.
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