South Beach diet. Eating out and Phase 1

I wanted to start my diet. Turns out I'll have to eat out with
associates at work.

Any recommendation as to what to order. My co-workers will not go to a
restaurant chain like Denny's.

...

You can always order a salad. Just be careful about the type of dressing you
ask for vinegar and oil will work.

Make sure that the meat doesn't have any breading. I am not able to make
much better suggestions as you were not clear about what type of food you
would be eating.

Are you thinking fast food or more upscale then Denny's?
"General Fear" wrote in message
...

I wanted to start my diet. Turns out I'll have to eat out with
associates at work.

Any recommendation as to what to order. My co-workers will not go to a
restaurant chain like Denny's.

..

General Fear wrote:

I wanted to start my diet. Turns out I'll have to eat out with
associates at work.

Any recommendation as to what to order. My co-workers will not go to a
restaurant chain like Denny's.

Eating or ordering low carb takes some getting used to but
with practice I can now glance at a menu and order low carb
at any place I go. Sometimes I scan for an item on the menu
that is low carb by ignoring something that appears on the
plate. Sometimes I do a custom order.

At the start look through all the items on the menu. If you
developed a habit of ordering you ended up ignoring the variety
available. Look with a low carb eye and it's there.

So where are you going? I order different stuff at a Schezuan
place than a German place, at Korean place than at a Mexican
place and so on.

General Fear writes:

I wanted to start my diet. Turns out I'll have to eat out with
associates at work.

I guess I'll ask the dumb question: do you really *have* to? If you
brown-bag it, you can eat whatever you want to bring from home,
especially if there's a refrigerator and microwave available.
Cafeterias often have some decent low-carb choices, especially if
there's a salad bar. You can usually see what you're ordering there,
which helps.

Any recommendation as to what to order. My co-workers will not go to a
restaurant chain like Denny's.

Are they too fancy for Denny's, or vice versa? I'll guess the former.

About all you can do with non-chain places is ask questions and frequent
the places you like often enough to become familiar with their menus.
I've ordered vinaigrette that had so much sugar it was grainy with it.
I've ordered grilled fish that was breaded and then grilled. I've
ordered "grilled chicken with wild rice" and gotten 80% white rice and
20% wild. You just never know unless you ask, and even then you'll get
waiters who don't know the answer or get it wrong, or get food that's a
problem in some way it didn't even occur to you to ask about.

As for specific foods, steak is pretty safe, although I've looked up the
nutrition info for some chains and seen non-zero carbs on their steaks,
so presumably they're using a carby marinade or something. Baked or
grilled meats are usually okay, but ask about breading. Steamed
low-carb vegetables are usually safe, as is a salad with olive oil as a
dressing. Most places will exchange the potato side for the green
vegetable of the day, which helps. At places with self-serve salad
bars, I usually take a small amount of the non-low-fat ranch dressing
and cross my fingers. Soups are a total crap-shoot. Forget about
dessert, unless they have some berries that haven't been coated with
sugar.

It really just depends on the menu. At most places, I can find
something that works, but sometimes I get fooled. Sometimes I end up
eating something that wouldn't have been my first choice, simply because
it was the safest thing on the menu. Mostly I eat at home.



--
Aaron -- 285/253/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz