Photo by wEnDaLicious

In today’s culture, eating out has become more the norm than the exception. With two parents working, it is often very hard for either or both to come home and prepare a meal at home. Plus there are lots of folks out there whose job requires them to entertain clients at restaurants whether they like eating out or not.

Truth is that eating out in a restaurant is a huge obstacle to overcome if you want to achieve or maintain a nice, healthy, trim and fit body. Eating at restaurants is one of the biggest reasons why so many people gain weight when they travel.

So here are a few tips that you can use to eat healthier and stay lean even while dining out in restaurants.

Eating Out Survival Tips

The three most important things to avoid that are found in virtually every restaurant in the land are deep fried foods (anything battered that endured a scorching bath of trans fats), refined starchy foods, and finally any sodas, juices, or other sugary foods (with the exception of whole fruits which are a great choice).

To the extent that you can avoid these major culprits, you will save your body from the major food(?) sources that are known to cause the worst damage to our health — trans fats, refined vegetable oils, refined starchy carbohydrates, and processed sugars.

This also means that you should try to skip the bread that is usually served for you to munch on while waiting for your meal. You also need to reduce all the heaping portions of pasta and rice that are usually piled on your plates.

A Healthy Alternative for Restaurants

As an alternative, you should simply order meat with a side vegetable and/or a salad. Almost any restaurant will happily allow you to substitute veggies or a side salad for the fries or chips that almost always are served with burgers or sandwiches.

As an aside, it always amazes us how many people think we’re weird when we ask to substitute veggies for fries. Ironically, these are also the same people who complain that they are overweight and have “tried everything” to shed those pounds. If there are two things that should be totally removed from everyone’s diet due to the damage they cause, it is sodas and fries!

A Graphic Comparison

For a shocking view of the difference this simple substitution makes between choosing smart and following the crowd, consider the following comparison. Most people will eat out and order a meal consisting of a sandwich or burger, chips or fries, and a soda or other sweetened drink (and no, diet sodas are NOT healthy but that’s a whole different article).

An infinitely better alternative, if you care about your body and your health, is to order a sandwich or burger, side salad or veggies, and unsweetened iced tea or water (no diet drinks — unless you enjoy drinking poison!)

These two simple substitutions will save at least 400 – 900 calories every meal you eat out. (The wide variation is due to factors like drink refills and the portion sizes of the fries.) As an added bonus, you are eliminating the most harmful foods your body could ever ingest by simply avoiding those devilish trans fats and high fructose corn syrup inherent in the fries and soft drinks.

I hope these few, simple dining tips help you make better choices for a leaner and healthier body the next time you eat out.

To learn more tips like this go to facts you must understand about fats.

Fat Burning Food No. 1 — Avocados

This is one of those so-called “fattening” foods that has been given a bum rap. Avocados are one of the most beneficial foods you can eat because they actually burn fat! Not only that, but avocados make almost everything creamier in consistency and more delightful in taste. Additionally, they are absolutely loaded with good fat, fiber, and antioxidants, not to mention the abundance of vitamins and minerals. And we cannot forget that the healthy fat found in avocados also assists in appetite control and supplies fat burning hormones to your body.

We’d like to suggest that you think of innovative ways to incorporate avocado or guacamole into your diet each day. Be willing to experiment and try it in everything from your smoothies, eggs, salads, and sandwiches. For example, one of my favorites is Sharon’s Easy Chocolate Mousse (BTW, our recipe site is in drastic need of repair, so forgive the lack of indexing that works.) By following our suggestion, you will find that you will start to burn body fat faster! You should unquestionably think of avocados as one of the very best healthy super foods.

Fat Burning Food No. 2 — Egg Yolks

Yep, that’s right! Beautiful, yellow egg yolks complete with all of their fat and cholesterol will help you burn fat. Incidentally, you’ve been terribly mislead and frankly, lied to about the cholesterol in egg yolks. The cholesterol found in egg yokes in reality increases your GOOD cholesterol and helps balance the proper ratios of good vs. bad. Therefore, do not be fearful of the fat and cholesterol in these little nutritious, power packed treasures. Additionally, if you choose those “cage-free” eggs from chickens that were raised in a free-roaming environment, then the omega-3 content will be higher and with a more properly balanced fat profile.

Plus, egg yolks are considered one of the most nutrient dense foods known to man in terms of vitamins, minerals, and other trace nutrients. To list all of the life-sustaining nutrients in egg yolks would easily consume an entire page, so I promise not to even attempt that in this article. Just remember that egg yolks should NOT take a back seat to egg whites. Why, even the protein found in an egg is more bioavailable when the yolk is included!

And none of this addresses the issue of taste. Let’s face it — you can’t improve God’s perfect food by throwing half of it away. God didn’t make a mistake! So don’t be reluctant to eat those delicious and healthy eggs so you can start burning that fat around your middle even quicker.

Fat Burning Food #3 — Grass-fed beef

Did you realize that most beef you see at the supermarket is grain fed beef from cattle that were most likely in extremely poor health? Because of that, the beef has significantly reduced nutrition values and omega-6 to omega-3 fat ratios that are way out of balance. Fortunately, there is a better option — and that is beef from cattle that have been feed on grass!

Grass-fed beef is recognized as having significantly higher levels of healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Then when you factor in the lower omega-6 fats (which most folks get way too much of anyway), you have a much preferred option. Grass-fed beef also boasts higher levels of many vitamins and minerals. To top all that off, beef from grass-fed animals contains higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). CLA is acknowledged as a healthy fat known to help build muscles and burn fat.

So feel free to go ahead and eat more beef. Just make sure you choose healthy, grass-fed beef instead of nutrition-poor, grain fed beef. And enjoy and start burning more body fat with these three misunderstood fatty foods!

If you want to lose body fat faster, check out these 5 tips to Burn Stomach Fat the smart and effective way.

Photo by CoachSharon

All of our readers have heard Sharon or I say how bad trans fats and high fructose corn syrup are for you, so rather than play that same old tune again, I’d like to mention a couple foods that will likely amaze you that they are responsible for packing on the fat.

Fattening Food #1
The first type of food that causes fat which amazes a lot people, is one that is thought to be “healthy” — fruit juice. Don’t misunderstand me, this is not a campaign for anti-carb per se…we truly believe that most fruits are extremely healthy for us. You see, our bodies just weren’t designed to separate the pulp and fiber from the juice, and then only drink the extremely high calorie sweet mixture that’s left, and not consume the fiber and other healthful portions of the fruit.

When you just drink the juice of fruits (apple and orange juice representing two of the greatest offenders in the SAD or Standard American Diet), you’re not getting the appetite gratification impact of the fiber naturally found in the fruit, and you’re left wanting to consume even more carbs. Plus, the fiber in whole fruit slows the blood glucose response which comes from eating whole fruit, in contrast to drinking just the fruit juice alone.

In a nutshell, drinking significant quantities of fruit juices actually causes you to store fat. But, eating whole fruits, including all of the fiber, actually assists you in maintaining a healthy, well-balanced diet containing a high density of nutrients (assuming the rest of your diet is made up of whole unprocessed foods as well).

Fattening Food #2
The second type of food that’s usually incorrectly thought to be good for you is any product made from wheat…this includes almost all breads (bagels, muffins, et al.), cereals, pasta, crackers, etc. And yep, I’m including “whole” wheat in this family of these foods which can cause you to store fat. I include whole wheat because it’s only due to a technicality (loop hole?) that legally allows food manufacturers to label something “whole wheat” or “whole grain” even if it only contains a small amount of whole grains.

First, a great many people have some degree of problem with the gluten found in wheat as well as several other grains. Those who have been correctly diagnosed as having celiac disease are highly sensitive to gluten, but what most people don’t understand is that the human gastrointestinal system was not designed to consume the massive amounts of wheat found in today’s diets. Again, we have a fundamental design issue. The incorporation of large quantities of wheat into the human diet has only taken place within the last 80-100 years. This is a relatively small amount of time compared to the diet that the human digestive system acclimated to over the many years of eating a hunter-gatherer diet of meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

It is interesting to note that from our experience with many clients, that those who are willing to take us up on the suggestion of doing away with all forms of wheat from their diet for two to three weeks to see if they begin to slim down and feel better, nearly always come back to report amazing results. Often, they not only start to shed body fat, but they also notice that the headaches and indigestion that has troubled them for as long as they can remember also goes away. Occasionally even undesirable skin conditions disappear by simply eliminating wheat from their diet.

If you want the facts about eating strategically for lasting fat loss, read these five tips for Losing Body Fat the intelligent and effective way.

Photo by Mr TGT