Calories- Japanese Steakhouse
 

I am new here but I am loving the forums!

Few weeks ago, I've begun exercising and counting calories. One night, my husband and I went out to a Japanese Steakhouse (where they cook in front of you) for dinner. I thought it would be harmless to my diet to get something veggie. I had saved calories prior to going out and I was pretty hungry. We sat down and ordered our dinner. I was shocked how much butter and oil they used to cook the rice, noodles and veggies! Normally, I'd think it would be a healthy choice but of course, you don't watch them cook the food in most restaurants. They put the rice and noodles on my plate and it took forever for them to finally put the vegetables on my plate. I was so hungry but I didn't want to touch the rice or noodles. I did allow myself have 1 small bites of each. I had a hard time eating the vegetables, knowing how much butter and oil the chef had used. :dizzy: The couple seated next to us had ordered steak, salmon, shrimp, chicken and veggies on top of the noodles and rice! I can't even imagine how many calories they had consumed that night. It was really an eye opening experience for us!
Yesterday, we took our kids out to a local "healthy" restaurant. We ordered veggie wraps, thankfully, I asked for a copy of the nutrition facts before we ate our dinner. I was shocked to see that our veggie wrap contained 600 calories! And they came with air baked fries that contained about 300 calories! After seeing that, I ate half my wrap and few fries very slowly and I was satsified. But, oh boy!
I think we'll be eating out a lot less now! On the bright side of all this, now, I can see how we gained weight--every calorie counts and restaurants really do pile up on calories.

I call it sticker shock. Amazingly sad how many calories/carbs/sodium can be stuffed into food.

Ugh tell me about it. I will never eat out anywhere without looking up nutrition facts and planning what I'm going to eat ahead of time anymore. Too often have I thought, "oh, I'll just have the salad!" and then gotten home and looked it up to find that the salad has more calories stuffed in it than a burger would have!

Oh, preach OP...it is ridiculous how hard it is to make "healthy" choices, especially when they advertise the food as a healthy alternative. Thank God for calorie-counting apps for my android. I have THREE different ones and when I go out on a limb I look over my menu very carefully and I type the names of the food in each of those little apps and that's how I make my decisions now. Or else, I try to look for a review of the restaurant for dieters or calorie counters to see what they say about health-wise.

My husband and I go to a similar place pretty regularly (maybe 2x/month), though it's the kind where you cook on a little grill yourself at your table. Thankfully they have recently added the calorie counts on the menu items, which makes it easier to select items that I know fit within my plan. Even before they added the counts to the menu, though, I'd gotten into a few habits that I keep to when we go there: for my grill item I get something lowish in fat and calories, like chicken or shrimp, and eat only a portion of it; I don't eat the dish of rice; I eat only the salad (the one they serve is very low calorie) and vegetable sides; and I order one sushi roll but eat only 1/2-2/3 of it. It ends up being a very satisfying meal for less than 500 calories, and my husband is more than happy to polish off everything I don't eat. If I weren't paying really close attention though, it would be incredibly easy to consume 1200+ calories in that single meal! I definitely understand the "sticker shock"; it's still amazing to me how restaurants find ways to cram an enormous amount of calories, fat and sodium into seemingly "healthy" food.

I have a couple of tricks for eating out. I always ask for no butter or oil on the veggies (even at that steakhouse, they can do them in the back), I generally order grilled fish if there is no nutrition info available, and I immediately split the portion in half (or thirds!) since the servings are so huge. It is just shocking how many calories, fat, and sodium are in restaurant food. There are multiple dishes at most places that are more cals than I eat in a whole day.