Chinese Buffets are killing me
 

I have done so well the last couple of weeks and last night I fell off the wagon. After a late meeting I met my hubby and went out to eat. It was already 6:30 and I wanted something fast. I normally eat before 6:00. I "thought" I could control my eating. Well that did not happen. I ate much less than I did months ago but I still ate too much. I have been on a clean diet with very little meat. I ate more meat last night than I have in the last 2 weeks. This morning I was 4 lbs up. Really? One meal can do that? I know I went way over my points for the day but I used my flex points, not touching my activity points. Has this happen to anyone else? :?:

If I eat Chinese food (particularly food from a restaurant and not something I made myself), I often gain quite a bit of water weight the next day. There's just so much sodium in the sauces! Drink a ton of water and I bet you'll lose those extra pounds pretty quickly.

Yes, sodium in your standard Americanized Chinese food is awful. That's more than likely where most of the weight is coming from. 1 pound of fat equals about 3500 calories and you know you didn't eat 14000 over maintenance in one day. Give it a little bit and you'll be back down.

That said, I loathe buffets. They always seem to encourage people to over eat, especially the frugal type. "I paid for it so I'm going to get my money's worth!" Where a frugal person goes to a regular restaurant and says "I'm only going to eat half so I can get two meals out of one meal (leftovers)".

Another thing I don't like about buffets is that many hands, faces and other things that close to my food. I know there are sneeze guards but they're not THAT effective. People reach over, sometimes use the same plate twice. Spend a little bit of time in a bathroom and you'll be surprised how many people don't wash their hands. The other thing is food safety. I worry about how long food has been sitting out. Call me paranoid but that cashew chicken isn't worth two days in the bathroom. ;)

Sometimes we have no choice where we eat but I avoid buffets like the plague.

It's probably mostly water weight. After all, you'd have to have eaten something like 14,000 calories yesterday to have actually gained four pounds of fat in the last 24 hours. I've had water weight gains from eating out (especially Chinese food) - it comes off in a few days as long as I go back to my regular eating habits.

Congratulations on having eaten less at the buffet than you used to - that sort of behavioral change is too awesome to minimize! :carrot::carrot::carrot:

Chinese buffets used to be my worst enemy, now I find them the easiest restaurants for eating on-plan (but I can't go "too hungry" or I throw all my good intentions out the window).

I follow a reduced-carb plan, so if I avoid the grains and starchy foods, I can do very well on a buffet. My go-to foods on a chinese buffet are the peel-and-eat shrimp, the grilled meats (such as chicken skerwers), lots of raw veggies fromm the salad bar, and stirfries that are very heavy on the veggies (I especially like the dish that is mostly wok-fried green beans, sometimes with a very small amount of pork or other meat or meat substitute).

I will usually plan to spend my small carb budget on a sushi or a small serving of rice noodle. If I've already spent my carb budget before eating out, I'll avoid the starchy and sweet options entirely.

So long as I stay on budget, the restaurant meals do not affect my weight loss EXCEPT for water weight gain. I will usually gain a couple pounds overnight, just from the sodium - but these couple pounds are gone by the next morning if I just drink a little extra water the day of and day after the restaurant meal.

I used to avoid restaurant meals entirely, because of the temporary weight gain they'd cause, but I really enjoy restaurant eating, so I was setting myself up to fail by depriving myself of something I enjoy, just to avoid seeing what amounted to an entirely harmless weight fluctuation. Now I eat out without guilt, but I work hard to stay on plan, and I include the extra water and ignore the temporary weight gain as a matter of course. I don't beat myself up over two pounds that will be gone within 36 hours (if I don't use it as an excuse to continue eating off plan - which was another old, bad habit).

thanks for advice