My Restaurant Strategies

Hey everyone, it's Dr Angela here.

I want to talk to you today about how to manage restaurants.

Here's what I used to do.

I used to go into a restaurant and that was my opportunity to splurge! I would order whatever I wanted off the menu, I'd order a glass or two of wine, I'd order dessert, I would just go hog wild in restaurants. And then I would walk out feeling stuffed and bloated and gross and I'd wake up the next morning feeling even worse. And I would just ask myself, what on earth did you do?

So I changed my restaurant strategy, and I wanted to talk to you about that today so that you know what to do when you go to a restaurant. So how do you manage dining out? Now, if you don't already know me, I'm a board certified obesity medicine physician practicing in Olympia, Washington and I have an online program called Journey Beyond Weight Loss designed to help people lose weight and keep it off! That's the most important part, right?

I want to acknowledge that there are a lot of people out there - and my patients are among them - who have to eat out in restaurants a lot. Either they travel, or for business, or they might have to entertain clients. And so I want to let you know if that's you, that the hints I'm about to give you will work really well for you too.

First, I want to make a distinction between eating out and dining out. So what's eating out? Eating out is when you just haven't really planned anything and so you go grab something quick or maybe you call Uber eats or grub hub or one of the other meal delivery services out there. Hopefully by now if you've been with me for a while, you know that that's probably not a wise thing to do just because the likelihood of you getting something that is nutritious is not very high when you're eating like that.

So I'm not talking about 'eating out' in this video. I'm talking about 'dining out' in restaurants. That's when you plan to go to a restaurant, you're meeting up with friends or maybe it's date night or there's some sort of special occasion. How do you manage that kind of eating? Before I get too far into this, I want to acknowledge those of you who are frequent travelers for work or whose job requires you to entertain clients in restaurants a lot. The principles I’m going to share with you apply across the board... But I recognize that it’s going to be more challenging since restaurants are a part of your life and not something you’re doing once in a while as a special outing.

To help, I have some hints and tips for you.

First - Tip #1, get the right mindset. I mentioned before - my former mindset was 'splurge'. Like 'this is my opportunity to eat things that I ordinarily would never cook for myself - and I'm just going to have whatever I want.' As a society, we use dining out as entertainment. So, we walk into a restaurant with the idea that we’re going to entertain ourselves with special delicious food that someone else is preparing that we don’t have to make for ourselves. This automatically puts us into a splurge mentality which can really wreak havoc with our health.

I don't have that mindset anymore. Here is my mindset now. My mindset is that I'm going to eat something that is delicious for sure, usually something I wouldn't cook at home, but that is also nourishing to my body.

So things may get prepared in new ways. That's awesome! But my main purpose for dining out is because I want stress free quality time with people that matter to me. And so I am there with friends or family to enjoy quality time. I don't have to do the cooking! Somebody else is doing that for me. I don't have to clean up! Somebody else is doing all of that too! It is my time to be able to focus on the people that I care about and love. You want to focus less on the food as entertainment and focus more on the opportunity that going to a restaurant gives you for stress-free quality time with people that matter to you, and eat really nourishing food while you're at it. This is what dining out should be about. The people. NOT the food.

Tip #2, know your local restaurants. If the people that you're with are wanting to go out for pizza, you want to steer them to a place where you know that you can get good healthy meals. You want to be the one in charge of determining which restaurants you go to for the most part. Try to avoid places where all they have is fried, crappy bar food, that kind of stuff. You want to go to restaurants where you know you can get good quality food? So know your local restaurants these days. Restaurant menus are always up on the internet. You can always look it up ahead of time and see what they have available. Take pride in your research and putting your health first!!

Tip #3 is to focus on nourishing the body. So when I go to a restaurant, I look at the menu, focused on NOURISHING my body with good protein, delicious vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats like nuts and wonderful dressings. The first thing I do is I decide what kind of protein do I want to eat? Whether it's beef or pork or chicken or some sort of fish or tofu, what protein do I want to eat and how are they serving it? Do they have a protein appetizer that might work? What kind of proteins do they have on salads? What are their entree proteins?

So once I've picked the protein, then I pick a vegetable. Now, I don't necessarily like to have just whatever vegetable. Let's say I decided on chicken, but I want the vegetable that comes with a beef? I just ask! And here's the deal. I worked for years and years and years as a server in restaurants as I was going through school. Your server does not care what you eat! Your server cares that you're happy, that you'll be coming back, and that you'll leave him or her a good tip! They couldn't care less what you order. So if you want the vegetable that comes with the fish or the beef with your chicken, ask for it! They don't care!

Tip #4. Ask for what you want. Starches are going to cause your insulin levels to rise and that's going to cause fat gain. So ask them to leave the starch off the plate, and just ask them to give you double vegetables! Works great every time. What about bread? Well, if the people at your table want bread, then that's fine. Let them eat bread. But you recognize that if you eat bread, it's going to jack your insulin levels up and cause fat gain! So I just avoid it.

What about dessert? If the people at your table are ordering dessert, that's fine. What I usually do is ask if they have some berries or some other fruit and if it makes sense to have whipped cream with it, awesome. Berries and cream are great, but maybe they've got some other kind of fruit that would be delicious to have for dessert. If there's none of that available, then what I will do is just order a cup of decaf coffee or some herbal tea and sip on that. Do I feel deprived if everybody around me is eating dessert and I am not? No. Why? Because I know that that sugar is going to trigger the addictive center in my brain and I don't want to deal with those cravings.

You know, once you're off sugar and flour products, it is so hard to have to deal with those cravings again and I just don't want to deal with it. So I don't feel deprived. I just feel happy that I get to walk out of that restaurant feeling light and energetic and I'm not going to have a bunch of cravings the next day.

So that's how I handle restaurants.

So the four tips for you, number one is get the right mindset - focused on the people, not on the food. Tip number two is to know your local restaurants and make sure you go someplace that has decent food. Tip number three is to nourish your body. Tip number four is order what you want without worrying about what anybody else is going to think about it. You get to nourish your body where you want to nourish your body and let everybody else worry about their bodies.

So that's all I have for you today. Now I do want to mention one other thing though, and that is alcohol. I did a live video on alcohol a couple of months ago now. And basically I'm not saying don't drink, but I am saying you need to be careful with it. You don’t necessarily have to avoid alcohol, but you’ll want to be very careful with it. Sometimes you end up eating a lot more than you thought you might. I will put a link to the alcohol video in the description of this video for you so that you can go watch that if you haven't seen it.

The other thing is if you want more weight loss tips, I've got an awesome free guide. It's called the Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes. Go ahead and download that free guide. The link is below also. Okay, so that's all.

I'll see you next time with some awesome weight loss tips! Take care. Bye. Bye.

To Your Health!

Dr Angela

Alcohol video

The Three Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes video