Dining out on a diet doesn’t have to mean blowing up your fat loss progress. Here’s the guide to making restaurant meals work when you’re trying to lose weight.

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Weekdays are solid. You’ve got the routine down pat with the work life balance (or imbalance) of school schedules, inbox hell and juggling how to keep Kathy from HRs latest baked goods from overtaking your lunchtime salad plans.

The nutrition and workout schedules are hectic, but manageable and you’re able to manage them successfully while still finding at least a few minutes per day to unwind before hitting the reset button and starting over every single day.

Until the weekend comes. Then all hell breaks loose.

It’s on to the boozy brunches and the kids’ birthday parties or weddings and family get togethers.

That lunchtime salad looks more like a slice of pizza. Ain’t nobody got the time or the drive to cook every single day, so Saturday and Sunday are for takeout and delivery. Dessert is on the menu, along with wine and bourbon and beer to go along with your sports viewing habits.

The weekend can be when the most sound nutritional plan goes to die. And it’s usually a direct result of eating too many meals that are not prepared at home.

Does this mean you can never eat a restaurant meal again? Of course not. You can absolutely go dining out on a diet and still lose weight, look good and feel great. 

In this guide, I’m going to break down exactly how to do just that. You’ll get my tips for eating at restaurants and figuring out what the macros look like so you don’t have to freak out and feel guilty about enjoying a meal with friends and family.

Let’s get into it with my biggest tips for making your diet work while eating away from home.

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Plan your meals ahead of time

Most mainstream restaurants have fancy websites that include their menu. You can and should spend a few minutes checking this out and developing a plan of attack for your meal out.

This is crucial when trying to stay committed to your plan when dining out on a diet. Calories in versus calories out will always be the No. 1 driver of the fat loss journey and in order to ensure that you’re hitting your calorie targets, you’ve got to have a plan. You can start to build that plan by checking out the menu ahead of time and figuring out the best options available to you and where it will fit in your diet.

Many restaurants are now including calorie and even macro counts. It’s a big reason why so many in the fitness industry are enamored with a chain like Chipotle, where the macro calculator allows you to design your own meals based off of the items available.

But at minimum, it’s important to check out the menu, and find a few dishes and options that match your current dietary goals.

When you don’t know the calories or macros, keep it simple

Obviously, the majority of restaurants didn’t get the memo that you’re trying to lose weight and they opted not to put the entirety of their nutritional information and/or macronutrient profiles on their website for you to calculate ahead of time.

No worries. You can still make smart choices while you are away from home. It’ll come down to eyeballing things a little bit, though. Which is why you’ll want to pick the meal options that have the fewest number of components.

Most restaurants have options for meals that are based off of a protein source, a simple carb option and some veggies. That’s all you need to make sure you’re at least in the ballpark range for a meal that’s on plan.

You see, at first glance, that salad might have you fooled into thinking it is the one and only option that will keep you on track. But most restaurant salads have a ton of add-ons piled on top. Most of which are higher in calories and can easily blow up your entire calorie deficit.

Things like slivered almonds, cheeses, roasted vegetables (cooked in tons of oils) and heaping tablespoons of high-calorie dressings will easily tip the scale at 800-plus calories, if you aren’t careful.

So your plan of attack must include a good read of the menu to determine which meals have the extra add-ons (and hence the extra calories) versus which meals are simple and to the point and easiest to break down so you can eyeball the portions.

Break down each component of the meal

Let’s say you went ahead and ordered the salad with all of the fixins’ because you had the room in your calories for the day … or you just really wanted the salad, which is totally cool, too.

So now that you’ve got this huge plate with approximately 17 different components, how are you going to track it? Well, the most accurate way to do this is to break down each of the 17 different ingredients, estimate the portions and plug them into your food tracking individually. 

Let me stop you before you jump into some tirade about not having enough time in your day to calculate the macros for everything from the grilled chicken to the arugula to the goat cheese and the dressing. 

For starters, you do have the time. If you want to make this fat loss journey a successful reality, it requires prioritizing things like tracking and being committed to being as consistent as possible. If you are 100-percent into this, you’ll make the time.

And second, we’re really only talking about five minutes of your day to plug in 17 different things into MyFitnessPal. Five minutes. That’s like less than 1-percent of your entire day.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the key here is to get as close as possible to the portion sizes and when in doubt, overestimate. So if you think that’s about 1 tablespoon of goat cheese, plug it in as 1.5 to 2 tablespoons to play it safe.

Find comparable options

Alright, so let’s say your favorite restaurant doesn’t publish the nutritional information for that favorite slice of deep dish pizza that you can’t wait to crush on Friday night. It’ll be equally difficult to break the meal down by every little component because how are you measuring the sauce and dough and are you really going to count every single pepperoni? Hell no.

That’s okay. The goal here will be to find the next best thing.

Once you log into your handy food tracking app of choice (usually MyFitnessPal, but there are others), the database should be full of comparable options that will get you close enough to what you’re looking for here. Simply search “deep dish pizza” and pick the option that works best.

Once again, the key here is to overestimate the calories. So you’d likely want to pick the highest calorie option to be on the safe side of things. 

Is this perfect? Absolutely not. But is it close enough? Yes. 

Don’t overthink this stuff. Unless you are in the final stages of physique contest prep, this really won’t matter in the grand scheme of things. 

You won’t be eating like this every single night of the week if you’re prioritizing your health. So one or two meals per week will just be a small blip on the radar of this fat loss journey as long as you are getting close enough.

When in doubt, it’s okay to skip a meal (aka, Intermittent Fasting)

No one ever got fat by skipping a meal, AMIRITE? Here’s the deal. There are a ton of health benefits to practicing the art of intermittent fasting. 

But, I want to pump the breaks on that stuff, because a lot of those benefits are minor in comparison to the overarching pillars of weight loss. At the end of the day, when you eat is not nearly as important as the following factors:

• Nail your calories. 
• Hit your protein. 
• Lift heavy stuff a few times per week. 
• Walk early and often. 
• Manage stress. 
• Get quality sleep. 
• Wash. Rinse. Repeat. 

If you practice those things consistently, you will be remarkably healthy and you will lose weight. That’s whether you decide to eat six meals per day, 26 meals per day or if you practice IF and just stick to one or two meals per day.

But, the antiquated idea that you have to eat every 2-3 hours throughout your day, or that you have to consume six total meals every day has finally been debunked. Same with this big cereal company marketing that dictated that you need to have breakfast, because it was “the most important meal of the day.”

You can absolutely skip a meal. Or two. Or three. In fact, you don’t ever have to eat breakfast again.

None of these things actually speeds up your metabolism. If you want to know how to actually increase your metabolism, you should check out my article on that topic here.

My point being that meal timing doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. You can skip meals and still see quality results and many health benefits. That’s the goal of IF. It simply shortens your window of eating, allowing for bigger meals when you do eat and simplifying the calorie deficit.

How does this work to your benefit when dining out on a diet? Simple. If you’ve got a dinner planned with friends and you know there are going to be a ton of higher calorie options on the menu, you can practice fasting throughout your day leading up to your meal. This will help mitigate the caloric damage you’re about to do at dinner time.

Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean that you can just eat whatever you want when you do finally decide to put food in your mouth. Those calories still count. And you can still very much eclipse your calorie goal for the day in just one meal. 

But, if you’ve got 1500 calories or so to spend in your calorie bank account and you’ve got them all saved up for your dinner, obviously that allows for some wiggle room.

Key factors and tips here: If you do decide to fast throughout the day, try to stick to just water and some black coffee (a splash of cream is okay, too … but a glorified latte is definitely going to break the fast and those calories will count). 

You also might want to have a small meal of lean protein and vegetables before heading out for dinner. Keep it low in fat and low in carbs to save calories. This will help hit those protein goals, and it could prevent you from going overboard during meal time when hunger could be difficult to keep in check.

Watch the alcohol 

You can still enjoy a drink and still lose weight. I broke that all down for you in this post here. But, the reason for being careful about how many beers you have is twofold. 

First, alcohol does have calories and those calories must be accounted for in your daily food log and macro counting. 

Second, alcohol can lower your inhibitions and intentions so when you thought you were going to split an app and have a salad, suddenly the bread and chips look enticing and you might want to wash everything down with a side of brownie a la mode. Now you’ve got a meal that just eclipsed your calorie goal for the day.

Okay, so what can you actually order when dining out on a diet?

One of the biggest reasons why I don’t like providing comprehensive meal plans for my one on one coaching clients is because it takes all of the skill out of it. It leaves you unable to adjust on the fly, like times you are eating out at a restaurant.

But, that doesn’t mean I don’t provide guidance on how to maneuver those situations. We go over many of the tips that you’re reading right now, in addition to a few other strategies that are personalized for each and every client. It’s possible to go dining out on a diet and still see significant and long-lasting results.

Now, all that said, you can order whatever you want at a restaurant. You can chose to guesstimate the macros. Or not. Your choice.

Just understand that the calories will count, whether you are actually counting them or not.

So let me help you find some options that are typically safer than others if you decide that you’d like to stay on point with your diet.

Here’s what we know: In order to lose weight (i.e., burn fat) you must prioritize protein. And if you’ve read my article on just how much protein you need while in a fat loss phase, you’ll know that I keep those requirements quite reasonable. So we’re not looking for an entire cow or chicken here, just a nice portion size of lean protein will do the trick.

With that in mind, you need to think about the menu options to make sure you cover that modest protein target. Coupled with a nice dose of veggies, it’ll go a long way to curb hunger pangs and destroy cravings so you don’t go face first into that bowl of chips or the brownie dessert.

Here are the safest options:

• Salad with lean protein options (grilled chicken, grilled shrimp, tofu/seitan) –– just be careful of all of the add-ons, like we talked about above
• Shrimp Cocktail
• Egg White Omelette
• Fish –– white fish are going to be the leaner options than a fattier fish like salmon
• Grilled Chicken Sandwich –– again, be mindful of the excess sauces and mayos (and the butter they likely slather on the roll)
• Grilled Chicken Entree
• Pork Loin
• Lobster –– try not to drown the thing in too much butter
• Crab
• Game Meat Burger

This should give you a nice starting place to play around with some options. Additionally, you’ll want to check out my handy Venn Diagram that I provide for all of my coaching clients that gives you an idea of where certain foods fall in the macro ranges.

For example, a fish option like salmon is full of protein, but carries some fats with it, too––it’s just not a lean protein source, like chicken breast. And, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you do need to account for it when trying to track.

Just enjoy yourself

Life is too short to not enjoy it from time to time. So if you’ve been on point with your nutrition and a special occasion pops up like a birthday dinner or a night out with a buddy from college that you haven’t seen in years … enjoy it.

One meal will never ruin your entire fat loss plan. Have some fun, don’t track your food for the evening and just understand that you’ll likely see some excess scale weight in the morning due to bloating and sodium (I wrote about the reasons why your weight might spike in this article).

Taking a break from tracking for one evening is a nice way to just relax and it can help make the dieting process a more sustainable and long term journey.

Now, if one meal turns into a week which turns into a month, that’s not exactly going to be awesome for you. Keep these occasions for special events and you’ll be absolutely fine.

Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

Let me help you figure out how to stay on track when dining out on a diet … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Dining out on a diet” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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