Eating At Restaurants

There's an interesting article over at MSN about secrets the restaurants don't want you to know.

With it being the holiday season, I've been eating out for work. A lot. The highlights were Duane's Steakhouse at the Mission Inn in Riverside, and Ten Asian Bistro in Newport Beach.

The damages, weight-wise, haven't been horrible--I weigh exactly what I weighed when I started doing the tale of the tape thing again.

Of course, I try to avoid some of the biggest restaurant calorie bombs:

Soda I never drink anything but water. I've gone on before about the bad effects of soda. To sum up, basically it's pure sugar, meaning pure fast-absorbed calories. Even diet soda has problems, my favorite being that the carbonation acts like an anti-fiber, making your body absorb calories and things faster than it would without it.

Fried Stuff Yeah, throwing stuff in the deep fryer is easy for restaurants, and there's a reason they call it golden brown and delicious. But it's oil on top of whatever simple carb they use in the breading--it's calories on top of calories. Plus, recent studies have shown that the Maillard reaction--the chemical process that browns fried foods--may interfere with your body's ability to absorb protein. So you may not be getting all the nutrients from the shrimp or calamari under there, either.

The Free Stuff They Put On The Table Whether it's bread or chips, that complimentary stuff they put out there does have calories. If you choose to much, be mindful and consider it part of the meal--if you do go in for the bread, than maybe opt for vegetables instead of the potato with your entree.

Of course, since I was actually trying to lose weight, still being at the weight I was isn't really all that much of accomplishment. However, it does give me hope that once I do get my weight back down, there will be plenty of delicious options that can help me stay that way.

(At least, that's how I'm trying to spin it . . .)