counting carbs & dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory
 

It's a family birthday party, I have no choice.

About three weeks ago, my doc told me I am pre-diabetic. After a lot of reading and thinking, I decided to cut all refined carbs. After even more reading and thinking, I am aiming for daily carb intake of about 100g to a max of 150g.

So I just printed the nutritional information for The Old Spaghetti Factory and don't see a thing I can eat. Most everything on the menu would be my entirely daily allotment of carbs, quite likely the junky kind I am avoiding.

I am not sure what to do.

My first thought is to eat something before I leave and then just nibble on a salad or something. However, I just know this will cause all kinds of questions and I don't really want to get into the reasons for my dietary changes.

My other thought is to suck it up and order the best I can to avoid the questions. Maybe I can order a combination of appetizer and salad, and therefore avoid the pasta. Or get the a chicken dish and ask for veggies on the side instead of spaghetti.

Either option, I will ignore the cupcakes, which are sure to be store-bought. I am feeling really good eating lower carb and don't want to ruin this feeling with a marginal meal at this restaurant.

If anyone has any suggestions how to deal with The Old Spaghetti Factory when watching carbs, I'm very interested.

Ask the waiter to bring just half and order and have a chicken dish.

If I recall, they have a super great minestrone soup which was low in calories (that's what I had the last time I ate there).

Good for you for planning ahead! I would find it hard to eat low-carb at an Italian restaurant (I LOVE pasta!). I also hate being the odd one out in situation like this, so I'm very sympathetic, but I think you can do it.

They have the baked chicken entree, and you can probably get them to swap out the pasta for some veggies or a house salad. On their gluten-free menu, they also mention that they have non-breaded chicken strips that can be added to any salad. And the minestrone looks good.

Good luck!

update
 

Thanks for the great suggestions!

I ended up having the baked chicken entree, and it was no problem to swap the spaghetti side with broccoli. That plus salad made for a decent dinner. Probably a little higher in calories than I would have liked, but I planned for this today with other foods I ate and will adjust a bit tomorrow, too.

My dad wondered what the heck I was eating, but my only comment was, "Mmmmm, doesn't this look good? I can't wait to dig in!" And it did look good!

Thanks again!

I'm glad you found something you could eat. I looked at the menu, and I would have chosen chicken or the meatloaf, with broccoli instead of pasta. They're usually good about such substitutions.

Good work. You are going to be at maintanence before you know it with alot of great strategies in place.