Portion size and food choice
If you must eat out, most places offer lunch menus in different sizes or with different options. It's here where you need to make sensible choices and stick to them. For example, my favourite sub sandwich was a 6-inch tuna with swiss cheese and salad on cheese bread, in a meal deal with a packet of chips and a drink. I typically filled my cup with regular sode and had a packet of chips. I did some investigating and the tuna sandwich isn't brilliant - it's made with a tuna mayonnaise, it has a lot more fat and calories than you might expect. The full-sugar soda wasn't doing any good either, and when it came to the choice of chips - well lets just say there were better options. Now when we go for lunch at this particular franchise, I have a roasted chicken breast sub with no cheese on wheat bread. I get a diet soda and some kettle-cooked chips. The difference? See the table below:
| Original choice | New choice | |
|---|---|---|
| Sandwich contents | 530kcal, 31g of fat | 310kcal, 5g of fat |
| Bread | 220kcal, 3g of fat | 200kcal, 3g of fat |
| Chips | 150kcal, 72g of fat | 110kcal, 15g of fat |
| Drink | 104kcal | 1kcal |
| TOTAL | 1004kcal, 106g of fat | 621kcal, 23g of fat |
This is a good example of how a simple change of lunch choice for me at that particular franchise resulted in a drop of 383kcal from my diet as well as 83g of fat. Let me put that in to perspective for you. At a normal walking pace, you'd typically have to walk over 3 miles to burn off 383kcal. I'm lazy and that's a long way.
So it's all about counting calories?
Not really. Every fad diet under the sun will tell you to count calories. If you do this rigorously, you'll go crazy and start eating for stress, which sort of negates the whole point of this. It's not about counting calories specifically. You should be aware of the calorific content but it's more about making sensible choices. You're about to order a triple coronaryburger super value menu? Think for a moment. Order a single coronaryburger instead, and don't do the meal deal - get a diet drink and skip the french fries.
But the meal deal costs the same! Yes - it most likely does. The question is do you want value for money or do you want to lose weight?