Struggling When Dining Out?

We’ve all experienced it, you’re on your healthy eating journey and you get invited out to dinner and that dinner causes a week long binge. Eating out can and should be something enjoyable. We don't want to get stuck in the cycle of eating healthy and binging. If you do find yourself in that cycle that could mean one of two things are happening: 1. You are restricting too much or 2. Your total calories are too low and you need to reverse diet. When you are dining out it should not feel like a treat and should feel like nothing more than enjoying delicious food. To accomplish this first we need to take the value we hold on food away. Food is just food. Once we do that you want to eat what you normally do on a daily basis when you are out to eat especially if you are dining out for half your meals. When I look at a menu I pick something based on if I can make it at home or not. Usually if I cannot recreate it then that is the item I will pick as long as it is close to what I normally eat. You can also choose your menu item based on how you are feeling and what you are craving as long as you have gotten to the point of food is food and holds no value. Something else to touch on while dining out is overeating and overindulging. I don’t know about you but I am a big fan of the doggy bag. Huge portions are normally used when dining out so that by the time you finish (if you finish) your whole meal you are ready for the deepest sleep of your life because you are so stuffed. Remember, you want to stop eating once you are not hungry anymore aka content not full. Now overindulging would be when you order the app, the entree, and the dessert and then decide to eat it all even though you were full after the app. Now ordering all that food is more than okay as long as you are listening to your hunger and satiety cues. Take home that doggy bag!