So I'm heading to Hawaii on Sunday for a two-week vacation. Vacations are tough for me--it's like a license to eat. This time I'm setting some ground rules for myself. We're staying in a condo so we've decided to eat out only three times while we're in Maui, but we're eating out both days we're in Honolulu. We've also decided that if we want wine, we'll drink it at home, not at restaurants. Two reasons for this--money and alcohol relaxes me so much that I eat more.
My trainer came up with some tips she uses when she eats out that I thought would be useful. Some most of us know, some might be new to many of us:
1. Look for a protein main dish and get a palm-sized portion. Order a box to take the rest home, which is easy to do at the condo. In Honolulu, I thought that if my DH doesn't want to eat my leftover (which really he shouldn't), I'd get the box, then toss it out. For some reason, that's psychologically easier for me to do that than leaving something on my plate.
2. When getting soup, make sure it's broth-based and ask if it's pasta or rice dominant. Unless lots of white pasta and white rice are on your eating plan, avoid that soup--choose soups that have more vegetables than starches.
3. Ask for a double serving of vegetables. Make sure, of course, they're not drowned in cream sauce and butter.
4. Wait for the meal to come before you eat the bread, and eat the bread only if it's a really good bread. I like this one because too many times I've filled up on so-so bread because I'm hungry and it's there. If I wait, then I'll eat less bread, and only eat it if it's really good bread.
5. Share dessert. You know, the taste really is in the first three or four bites and after that it's not necessarily eating because I enjoy it, but eating because I think I may never get it again or some other psychological reason.
6. Always order dressing on the side, even if it's a Caesar salad, and skip the croutons. I do the fork dip thing with dressing, by the way, which really works for me.
I'm putting this list on an index card and tucking it in my purse along with the bag of carrots, nuts and jerky she wants me to have at hand every time I leave the house. I try to eat every three hours, and if I'm away from my normal routine, I will let myself get too hungry and then eat anything that's put in front of me.
Aloha! I'm really going to try to make this a vacation where I at least maintain.