I think the book almost totally leaves out all of the good choices out there in restaurants-check out their websites, and you can have restaurant food in moderation.
Some winning examples:
Wendy's chili
small-210 calories
large 310 calories
Dairy Queen sugar free fat free orange cream bars-60 calories
DQ sandwich-200 calories
Applebees has many lowfat and low calorie menu items, such as quesadillas, blackened chicken salad, and a diet strawberry banana split. (That has become my favorite restaurant.)
Taco Bell chicken soft tacos are 190 calories each, and 7 grams of fat.
You can go into KFC and eat dinner for under 500 calories, just have the Tender Roast sandwich (310) and a single mashed potato and gravy (120), and avoid the fried chicken.
At any seafood restaurant, shrimp cocktail is very low calorie and low fat-just add the calories of the sauce and how many shrimp are in it from a calorie book.
Bob Evans has a fabulous huge fruit plate also-with fresh melon, grapes, pineapple, and strawberries...and it is BIG.
I just thought the book was sort of biased to all of the bad foods in restaurants, like the bloomin onions and huge coffee drinks-which everyone knows is fattening, and left out a lot of the good choices-at any nice restaurant, you can get a baked potato-just order it with the butter on the side, and keep a teaspoon in your purse to measure a bit out, because if they put it on, you can easily end up with 3 Tablespoons of butter on it-and msot places make grilled chicken breasts somewhere on the menu.
You can eat out about anywhere nowadays and stay on your diet if you take the time to look at the information most restaurants provide on their site-if they don't have it up there, you can email them, and a lot will get it for you.
Do the research, and you can eat out much more often and not feel like you are missing out.
Aphil