Eating out and other distractions

It is easy to keep to a healthy eating plan when you are at home. But as soon as you eat out, all your good intentions fly out. Here are a few tips to select the right food

Healthy food is the right way to go but it has to taste good too, isn’t it? It is easy to keep to a healthy eating plan when you are at home; but as soon as you eat out or go on a holiday or to parties, all your good intentions fly out the window and eating habits deteriorate dramatically.

Sounds familiar? The clue to eating out – to enjoy yourself at parties, when entertaining or on holidays – is to follow a few simple principles about the kind of food.

At restaurants: Read the menu properly and think of what you can eat. If it’s a buffet, walk past the table and you will find food that you can eat. Ask the waiter which items on the menu could most easily be adapted to suit you. For example, ask for sauces and dressings to be served separately so you can have just a little if they are creamy or fattening.

Parties: If you are going to party and have a fair idea that most of the foods served are likely to be fatty, salty snacks, make sure you do not arrive in a state of semi-starvation, eat and go. Most people are far less discriminating than usual when they are really hungry.

What to choose: Look for superb soups like lemongrass, clear vegetable or vegetable based soups like tomato, pumpkin, carrot, spinach, etc where the beauty of the ingredients is subtly found in the wonderfully flavoured stock.

Vegetables are a healthy eater’s best friend. Sautéd, steamed, boiled, grilled, tandoori in the form of salads vegetables soups in roti, bread, pastas, rice, dimsums wherever you can think of.

Guide to different cuisine: Start with salads, then vegetable based soups made only from vegetables.

Pan Asian: Choose clear soups with sauté d veggies, sautéd mushroom + rice or dim sums or sushi + steamed/sautéed grilled prawns or fish or chicken or tofu or bean sprouts.

Indian: Green salad tomato soup or clear veggie soup + tandoori vegetables + paneer tikka or chicken tikka or tandoori fish or tikka green chutney and tandoori roti if needed.

Italian: Tomato soup or minestrone soup + salad with Italian dressing + a side of veggies + pizza with lots of veggies less cheese.

Overall, try to drink lots of water before you have anything else to drink. The water will quench your thirst and you will then find it much easier to sip everything else slowly. The longer a drink lasts, the less you will drink. Do not have the whole desert but share it and stop at three bites, which will satisfy your craving. Avoid the white flour, fried, aerated drinks and mocktails.