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

by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer

Today, I wanted to give you my take on a confusing subject to most people:

…why some oils and fats you may use in cooking, baking, or other food use are actually harmful to your body, and why some are healthful.

Your Cooking Oil

Here’s the deal…

A lot of people seem to think that anything labeled as “vegetable oil” is good for you. NOT A SHOT!

Most of what is labeled as “vegetable oil” is simply heavily refined soybean oil (processed under high heat, pressure, and industrial solvents)… sometimes perhaps it may also be heavily refined cottonseed, safflower, corn, grapeseed, or other oils too.

In most instances, almost all of these processed oils are NOT HEALTHY for you.

If you buy processed food or deep fried food, you can usually be certain that these unhealthy oils are used to prepare your foods (or worse, it may use hydrogenated versions of these oils… aka – trans fats!).

You may have even bought some of these oils for your own cooking or baking at home.

The problem with soybean oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, grapeseed oil, safflower oil, and other similar oils is that they are mostly composed of polyunsaturated fats which leaves them prone to oxidation and free radical production when exposed to heat and light.

Processed polyunsaturated oils are the most inflammatory inside our bodies because of their high reactivity to heat and light. This inflammation is what causes many of our internal problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and other degenerative diseases.

Note: It’s ok if a polyunsaturated fat isn’t processed such as in whole foods like various nuts and seeds… In that case it’s not inflammatory, and is a great source of healthy polyunsaturated fats for you. By the way, omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids are both polyunsaturates. Your best bet is to choose raw nuts and seeds whenever possible to avoid the oxidation of polyunsaturated fats that can occur during roasting of nuts and seeds

However, all of the vegetable oils listed above are generally heavily refined during processing, so that makes them already inflammatory before you even cook with them (which does even more damage).

Here’s the actual order of stability of a type of fat under heat and light (from least stable to most stable):

1. polyunsaturated
2. monounsaturated
3. saturated

Here’s something that mainstream health professionals will never tell you…

Saturated fats are actually the healthiest oils to cook with!

Why?  Because they are much more stable and less inflammatory than polyunsaturated oils.

This is why tropical oils such as palm and coconut oils are best for cooking… they have very little polyunsaturates and are mostly composed of natural saturated fats which are the least reactive to heat/light and therefore the least inflammatory in your body from cooking use.

That’s also why natural butter (NOT margarine) is one of the best fats for cooking. This all goes directly against what you hear in mainstream health talk… because most health professionals don’t truly understand the biochemistry of fats, and falsely believe that saturated fats are bad for you… when in fact, they are actually neutral in most instances… and saturated fats from tropical oils are actually good for you as they contain mostly medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) which are lacking in most people’s diets.

In fact, lauric acid is one of the abundant MCTs in tropical oils and is known to strengthen the immune system.  Lauric acid is even being studied currently in medical studies for controlling contagious diseases.

To summarize… your best cooking or baking fats are generally butter or tropical oils such as palm or coconut oil.  Olive oil (extra virgin preferably) is ok for lower cooking temps as it’s mostly monounsaturated, so moderately stable.  The mostly polyunsaturated oils such as soybean, grapeseed, cottonseed, safflower, etc, are the least healthy for cooking or baking.

My choices for top healthy cooking oils that I use:

• Virgin Coconut Oil
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Real Butter (grass fed if possible)

Of course, with all of that said… we should keep in mind that trying minimize our cooking with oils can help to reduce overall calories. Cooking with oils in moderation is ok and can actually help satisfy your appetite more, but be careful not to overdo it as the calories can add up fast.

Here’s a related article about good trans fats vs. bad trans fats that I did previously (an eye opener to most people)…

I’ll be back soon with more Lean-Body Secrets. Til then…

Don’t be lazy… be lean.

PS – if you liked todays article, feel free to fwd this link on to any of your friends, family, or co-workers that would enjoy it.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Founder – TruthAboutAbs.com & Busy Man Fitness .com
AvalancheSkiTraining.com