Dining out is a big part of most people’s lives. Maybe you have to eat out frequently because you entertain clients at restaurants. Perhaps you don’t even like eating out. Regardless, if you want to keep a nice fit body, restaurant meals will give you a huge obstacle to overcome. In fact, eating out at restaurants is one of the biggest reasons why so many people fatten up while traveling.

5 Tricks To Eat Healthier

Below, I’ll give you a few very simple tricks you can use to eat healthier and stay lean even while dining out at restaurants…

The 3 most important things to avoid that are everywhere at restaurants are:

• deep fried foods (anything battered that got a scorching bath of trans fats)
• refined starchy foods
• any sodas, juices, or other sugary foods (except whole fruits, which are great)

If you can skip these major culprits, this eliminates the major food sources that do the worst damage in our food supply – trans fats, refined vegetable oils, refined starchy carbohydrates, and processed sugars.

This means you should try to skip the table bread, skip the french fries that come with every single sandwich on every menu known to man, and reduce all of the heaping portions of pasta and rice that are often loaded on the plates as well.

Instead, try to order just meat with side vegetables, and a salad, asking for the vegetables or salad as a substitute for the typical french fries, pasta, or rice, that most restaurant meals usually come with.

Almost every restaurant I have ever been to will always allow me to substitute vegetables or a side salad for the french fries or chips that almost always come with burgers or sandwiches.

On a side note, it always amazes me how many people scrutinize me because I substitute veggies for fries by telling me that I am “not living” because I refuse to eat french fries… are you kidding me! If that’s your idea of “living it up”, you need to get some better hobbies!

Ironically, these are also the first people to complain that they are overweight and have “tried everything”, yet can not lose weight, no matter what. I am not sure why so many people think that eating french fries equals “living it up”… hey, I am all for moderation with many things, but if there are 2 things that should be totally removed from everyone’s diet because these foods are simply that dangerous… it is sodas and fries!

Take a look at the typical difference this simple substitution makes between choosing smart and doing what most people do…

Most people will eat a meal out such as this:

• Burger or sandwich or burger
• chips or fries
• soda or other sweetened drink (and no, diet sodas are NOT healthy!)

A MUCH smarter alternative if you care about your body and health is this simple change:

• Burger or Sandwich
• Salad or veggies
• unsweetened iced tea or water (no diet drinks — unless you like to drink poison!)

These 2 simple substitutions save at least 400 – 900 calories every time you dine out (depending on drink refills and fries portion sizes)… AND you are cutting out the most harmful foods to your body as well by avoiding the evil trans fats and high fructose corn syrup from the fries and soft drinks.

Another side note: a little-known way to eat full portions of pasta, rice, and breads and actually get away with it without packing on the body fat is to make sure to schedule a high intensity full body resistance training workout (can be free weights or body weight training) before your scheduled meal time.

Sometimes it may be hard to fit the workout into your schedule right before the meal, but if you can, the meal can be your “post-workout meal”. After a high intensity resistance training workout, your body can handle a higher amount of carbs than normal to help replenish the muscle glycogen depletion you had during the intense workout.

A typical moderate intensity cardio workout will NOT cut it for this… it must be high intensity resistance training workout to deplete enough muscle glycogen to handle restaurant portions of carbs.

I hope these dining tips help you choose smarter and healthier for a leaner body next time you eat out.

Check out these unique fat loss & healthy diet tips Another article you may enjoy on the topic of food is located at Unhealthy cooking oils Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Geary

5-Minute Recipe to Healthy Chocolate Fudge

The major problem with most so-called “healthy” desserts is that most companies attempt to make them healthier by reducing the fat content and thereby increasing the sugar content or artificial sweeteners… there’s nothing healthy about either of those!

Below is my famous healthy chocolate-peanut-butter fudge recipe that takes only 5 minutes to make and is really simple. The great thing is that I use no added sugars, no artificial sweeteners, and all healthy fat sources. You’ll see why below.

My healthy chocolate-peanut-butter fudge recipe (peanut butter can be omitted if you prefer plain chocolate):

• Extra dark chocolate bar (3-4 oz bar works well — look for at least 70% cocoa content, between 70-85% — this minimizes the sugar content)
• 4 or 5 Tbsp of your favorite organic nut butter (almond butter, cashew butter, peanut butter all work well)
• 2/3 to 3/4 cup of organic coconut milk (great source of healthy saturated fats from medium chain triglycerides – MCTs)
• 2 tbsp rice bran (additional healthy fiber source)
• 2 tbsp oat bran (more healthy fiber including soluble fiber)
• 1/2 cup raw pecans, almonds, or walnuts (yes, more healthy fats, antioxidants, and tons of vitamins/minerals)
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins (optional based on your tastes)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• a little stevia to lightly sweeten (stevia is a natural non-caloric sweetener as opposed to harmful artificial sweeteners)

Start with the coconut milk, nut butter, and chocolate bar in a medium saucepan and put it on the lowest heat possible. Continuously stir as the chocolate, coconut milk, and nut butter melts together. Once these melt together add in all of the other ingredients and stir together very well.

Once everything is mixed well together, spread the mixture onto some waxed paper laid out in a baking dish and throw it in the fridge to solidify.

Now you have some of the healthiest chocolate fudge ever known to man!

Keep in mind that you still need to keep your serving portions small because this is still a calorie-dense snack even though it is super-healthy. The good news is that it is lower in sugar and calories than typical fudge and has loads more nutrition than any typical fudge.

Enjoy! Tell your friends that Trainer Mike Geary gave you this recipe.

Check out these 5 tips to Get a Flat Stomach faster with no bogus diet pills or useless “abdominizer” gadgets.

Good luck with your fitness goals!

–Mike Geary

The 2 fattening foods that I’m going to talk about in this article may actually shock you… most people falsely believe these 2 foods are “healthy”.  In all of my years working as a Certified Nutrition Specialist, this usually surprises people when I mention they should consider eliminating these foods from their diet.

What are the 2 worst fatty foods?

Everybody these days knows how bad trans fats and high fructose corn syrup are for you, so I figured I’d spare you yet another lecture on those… Instead, read on to see a couple foods that may shock you that they may be packing on the blubber.

The first type of food that is often falsely believed to be healthy is wheat products… this includes most breads, cereals, bagels, muffins, pasta, crackers, and so on.  And yes, I am including “whole wheat” in the category of this fattening food.

First of all, a large percentage of the population has some degree of intolerance to the gluten in wheat and some other grains. Full blown celiacs are the most sensitive to it, but what most people don’t realize is that the majority of the population was never meant to eat large quantities of wheat.  The human digestive system has never adapted to large amounts of wheat in the diet.

The introduction of wheat into the human diet has only been in the last couple thousand years, and it has NEVER been in such large quantities in the human diet until the last 80-100 years.  This is a small time frame compared to the traditional diet that the human digestive system developed over several hundred thousand years eating a hunter-gatherer diet of meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

From my experience with many of my clients, when they heed my advice and eliminate wheat from their diet for 2-3 weeks to see if they start to lose weight and feel better, this almost always makes a HUGE difference.  Many times, they not only start losing body fat much faster, but they also finally get rid of headaches and indigestion that has plagued them for years.  Sometimes even skin problems go away when eliminating wheat from the diet.

The 2nd example of the worst fattening foods that shocks many people because it is thought to be “healthy” is — fruit juice.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anti-carb advocate per se… I actually think most fruits are VERY healthy for us. However, we were NOT meant to separate the juice from the rest of the fruit and only drink the high calorie sugary mixture and leave behind the fiber and other beneficial components of the fruit.

When you only drink the juice of fruits (apple juice and orange juice being 2 of the worst culprits in the western diet), you are not getting the appetite satisfying effect of the fiber in the fruit, and you’re left craving more carbs.  Also, the fiber in whole fruit helps to slow the blood sugar response when eating whole fruit compared to fruit juice.

Bottom line… overconsuming fruit juices makes you fat.  On the other hand, eating whole fruits including all of the fiber helps you maintain a healthy balanced diet and high nutrient density (as long as the rest of your diet is whole unprocessed foods as well).

If you want the REAL truth on eating strategically for permanent fat loss, read these 5 tips for Losing Body Fat the smart and effective way.

Enjoy, and good luck with your nutrition endeavors!

–Mike Geary