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Welcome back everybody to the Clear Health Podcast. This is season two where we're talking about nutrition and weight loss. And today we're going to cover how to survive in restaurants.
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So back in med school, when me and my wife were courting, we noticed that the restaurants would serve us a way too much food. And we're like, we really have to do something about this. And we thought about it and we said, well, okay, we can either just ask for smaller portions or we can split the meal in half. so eventually we decided, well, I guess we just split the meal in half because they're not really gonna
measure out and cut smaller portions. So that's our first tip today is that you can take the restaurant entree, whatever it is, and split it in half. And I should clarify that these are restaurants where you go out and they have a menu and you sit down and you order. This is not like McDonald's or Burger King or anything like that. So that's the first tip is that split the plate. So you save.
One, on the number of calories. Two, on the financial aspect of it. So you're only buying one entree. And three, you get to experiment. So you can have little fun sharing it. You can say, what do you think about this? do we need to add a little salt, right? Because you're eating the same thing. So you guys can look at it and share that experience together. So you get a little bit more social.
connection. Now the next tip comes from actually having a four year old child who has something called a preference. And the preference is I want to eat anything that is carbohydrate and fried. So carbohydrate heavy and fried. So when we go out, we have started doing substitutions. So that's number two, substitutions.
If we see something like fries or a significant amount of rice, we're going to say, hey, I think we need to switch to a fruit or vegetable. So instead of things like pancakes with bacon, well, I'll get the bacon and then I'll put on his plate. I'll say, hey, get fruit with that, get the little fruit. And that's I'll tell the waitress. And you should be a little bit careful here because
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when you're looking at the kids menus, which I'll discuss later on in another podcast, how to go out to eat with children, but the kids menus aren't always the best. So it's good to kind of look over them and figure out, do I need to substitute anything here? But you can also do it for yourself. So you can actually substitute what's on that menu. And it's gonna take a little confidence, right? It's gonna be saying, hey, I want my principles followed and not the restaurants.
Right, because a restaurant has a principle of, well, if we give them more food, they'll be happier and they'll come back. However, we know that happier is relative to when you feel too full later on after eating the portion that they gave you. So you can substitute anything for fruit and vegetables. If you have a hamburger with fries, substitute it with some type of fruit or vegetable. Now, the next one goes on two principles.
which is eating healthy and avoiding toxic substances. So good, varied nutrition and avoiding toxic substances. So the third one is to avoid alcoholic drinks because this can, you can consume easily 500 calories in under five minutes. And so instead of that, look on the menu for something called a mocktail, -O -C -K, tail.
And if they don't have that, then you can kind of play a trick on your mind. Ask them for some sparkling water and then add in a lemon, a lime or an orange. So this helps to kind of play a trick on your mind where in many alcoholic drinks, they have kind of a bite to them, right? And so this sparkling water has that kind of little bit same effect.
Many drinks will use sparkling water as well, like vodka tonic. And so you can use this to play a trick on your mind and at the same time, avoid that hangover as well as consuming a vast amount of calories that you really don't want to. Now, the fourth one, which I alluded to a little bit earlier, is ordering from the kids menu for smaller portions.
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Now you have to be a little careful here because sometimes the kids menu does not have the best options for healthy eating. A lot of times it can be carbohydrate heavy. I've just seen things like flat noodles with butter and things like whenever they bring out quote unquote the Parmesan chicken, it's more like Kentucky fried chicken instead of the adult Parmesan chicken where it's lightly breaded.
This is what one of my posts actually on YouTube was about where I was kind of doing a little rant in the car that basically this restaurant brought out a kids Parmesan chicken that looked nothing like the adult version that we had just ordered. So we asked what was going on and why doesn't it look like the adult menu item? They had literally no clue about why this occurred.
And they, asked them, well, you might want to look into changing it to make it better for our children. Like this is very, very important because this is something that's contributing to diabetes and insulin resistance, know, worldwide and across America. So off of my rant. So you can order from the kids menu if it's healthy and they should have smaller portion sizes. Now the next one is
when you get done with your meal and you're like, hey, let's order dessert, go ahead and split that too, especially if you're in a group. So split it in the group, be like, hey, there's three of us, maybe even four of us, let's try and just split a dessert and see how we feel. And nine times out of 10, you will feel just fine. And that's another big part is recognizing that you,
have a connection to your body with your mind, right? The mind -body connection and understanding that when you make these changes, it's important to reflect back on what you just did in order to kind of change your mindset, in order to really ingrain into your brain that, these changes are okay and I feel okay and maybe even better at the same time because I'm not walking around with an overburdened
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gastrointestinal tract. So at the end, I would split the dessert. Now, the next one is at the beginning of the meal, when they bring the bread, that's something else that's kind of just added in there. You may say, you may try this, if nobody's hangry, you may say, hey, why don't we skip the bread and just bring the food or, you know,
entrees straight as well as the appetizers straight to the table and don't worry about bringing the bread. So this will also shave off a massive amount of calories because you know, nine times out of 10, you could be a little bit starving as long as you're not hangry and arguing, as long as kids aren't arguing, you may just skip this part. Now the next one.
I do this a lot. ask the waiter, say, what's your healthiest part on the menu? And point me to that section because I want to look that over first before I make any other types of decisions. And hopefully they have either a section that's like healthy eating menu or they have like a certain couple of entrees that are actually healthy for you. So you can ask them, hey,
Point me to that section and let me look over it first so I can make decisions based around that.
Now, this next one is a interesting one that I just learned recently from my wife that she does, because my wife is, she's a competition bikini bodybuilder, and so she has all these shortcuts, and I'll probably bring her on the podcast later, actually. When she orders salad, she always says, the salad dressing on the side. And so I've started doing this, and I realized that, hey, I only use half of the salad dressing, literally half of it.
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And so you're saving a ton of calories, especially with the oil, right? The oil is very high in calories. And so you're saving a ton of calories by putting this on the side and asking for it later. And then you can kind of titrate it, meaning you can add a certain amount of the dressing so that way you're still tasting the food itself and...
it's not smothered in the dressing, which would normally cover up the taste and all you're tasting is the dressing. So it's really good to do this and put it on the sign. You can then control how much is put on there and actually taste your food. So the next one is one that I use all the time as well. You want to put salads with meat combos.
Okay, or tofu combos, right? So you can say, one time, my wife said, bring me a salad with the kids portion of the salmon. So she was like, hey, I know you have this kids salmon, put that on top of the house salad. Usually not house salad, you just like spring salad or something like that. And then put the dressing on the side. And so the waiter kinda looks, and she's like,
you know, I think I can do that. And you know, she comes back after talking to the kitchen and says, yeah, I can totally do that. So she will take the portion from the kid's menu and put it on the salad itself. And that way the meat is just a little bit smaller and she has salad and she has this combo that tastes really good. Or you can also say, put the chicken on it, right? That's another thing.
You could even try steak if you like. But we do the fish and chicken portions just because they seem to go better with most of the other salads. It's not like we don't eat red meat. It's just that we find that these are a lot tastier with these types of meat, fish and chicken. So the next one, and which is our last one, is you should be adventurous. You should try something new.
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So a lot of times people will be stuck in their own eating habits and they won't wanna go outside of them, especially as we get older, it gets harder to try and experiment and do new things. Yet this is one of the things that helps keep our mind young and fresh. It helps keeps us learning and experiencing new things and honestly being happy. It's part of our stress management, as mindfulness.
Training is to do an experiment where you try something new on the menu. Hopefully something you've never tried and that is healthy at the same time. So one of the things that many people tell me in the clinic is that, I don't like fish. And my guess is that they've never tried well -prepared fresh fish. Usually it comes out either fishy,
And that's not good because nobody, the fish should not be fishy, which means it's going bad and should be returned to the kitchen. So fish can be dressed up really well. You can put on some Dijon mustard on it with just a slight bit of honey. And you have something that is extremely tasty and many people like it. I've invited many friends over who
are like, do not like fish, but yet when they try this, they say, golly, that's insane, it tastes so good. So it's how the fish is prepared and it's how fresh the fish is, which are two questions you can actually ask the waiter or waitress. So you should try something new, right? Because our taste buds change over.
and our habits change over and many things that we believed when we were a kid do not apply now. So the world has changed, right? So even though you didn't like it as a kid, you may in fact like it as an adult. So that wraps up everything we've been talking about. And remember that after each tip that you try, you should think about how you feel and
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get that mind -body connection going, which we're going to dive into a lot more later on in season two of the Clear Health Podcast. And as always, I hope you have a happy and healthy day. The Clear Health Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice,
and no doctor -patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast and materials linked from this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.