This is the first of a seven part series on dining out using the principles of eating real food in moderation. These articles include a handful of specific techniques that you can use to your dietary advantage, but each discussion focuses primarily on the principles of good eating while dining out, which are targeted at lifelong goals. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing. Thanks.

When it comes to eating out, you can sum up the most common dietary suggestions with this idea (which happens to be one of my least favorite diet suggestions):

“If you want to be healthy, substitute the steamed vegetables for…well…anything that might taste good.”

The effect of which sounds an awful lot like this quote:

“First rule of dieting: If it tastes good, spit it out.” – anonymous

In principle, this suggestion makes sense since you’ve now substituted a serving of vegetables, of which none of us are getting enough, for just about anything else (like carbs, fat, sugar, etc.) of which we’re all probably getting too much of.

But in practice, ordering the steamed vegetables seems like some sort of dietary punishment. While you sit quietly with your plate of dry, tasteless broiled chicken breast, rubbery unseasoned steamed vegetables, and if you’re lucky, an approximation of a salad that is composed of chopped, flavorless iceberg lettuce with a mushy tomato wedge and the dusty oil and vinegar bottles, your companions at the table are indulging in warm butter with a side of lobster, a generous plate of creamy hot fettuccine Alfredo and a thick and juicy 20 oz. steak.

Hardly seems fair.

For me, the suggestion to order the steamed vegetables is representative of a lot of reasons why most diet efforts fail. In essence, trying to micromanage your diet will work for short bursts, but in the end, you’re going to eventually wind up “giving in” and getting that side of golden deep-fried goodness. There has to be a better way.

Quality is the new Quantity

When you eat out, as we all know it can be pretty tough to figure out what the “real” food is – much less ordering something that comes in a reasonably sized portion (one that doesn’t fall into the volume equals value dietary disaster). Ordering the steamed vegetables instead of the fries or the baked potato can save you a bunch of calories, but unless you have completely lost your sense of taste, the steamed vegetables really offer very little value at all.

Why?

Because if you are basing value on quality and taste, steamed vegetables almost always fall far short. With some exceptions, like artichokes, steamed vegetables taste less like a well-seasoned dish and more like chlorofilled rubber. Not to mention, unless you’re eating at L’Arpège, for the expense of cutting up a handful of vegetables and throwing them over boiling water for a few minutes, the dollar value generally seems hardly worth it. Unless of course its complimented by a wonderfully crafted sauce.

So what is the better alternative?

The list: Don’t forget your principles when you dine out

So often when you read lists of recommendations on how to avoid things at restaurants, they miss the larger “life” points. My goal is to be able to maintain the habits of moderation even in the face of over-sized platters of hot wings and the basket full of butter-topped complementary bread. I want to eat for overall health; not low fat hacks, not low carb hacks, or any other short-term micro-solution.

And in the end, I don’t want to feel bad about that.

Here is a list of a few simple guiding principles to take with you when you are dining out. Keep in mind that these principles are based on the “eating real food in moderation” concept. Eating food-like substances for their chemical properties is the juxtaposition that has gotten us in this health mess, so eat real food – just less of it.

Dining out principle #1: Eat real food.

Or, don’t forget to eat real food simply because you’re not at home. It goes without saying that eating real food, food that you can identify without a list of chemical components you’ve never heard of (and some you have, in the news), is what eating real food is all about. Finding foods without labels – because they don’t need any – is ideal. But when you are out, it can be more of a game of figuring out what to avoid.

The best practice, when you can implement it, is to plan ahead. Don’t go out to dinner when you are starving, as you’ll probably overeat (more on this later in the week). That means that if you want to be successful in handling the choices in what could be less than ideal dining circumstances, don’t handicap yourself with extreme hunger before you get there. But more on that later.

In future articles I’ll outline a list of specific techniques, but for now, here is a short list of concepts to get you started:

1. Avoid fast food – it should only be the very last resort. As in, you are stranded in the desert and about to die of thirst, and magically – and sadly, believably – a set of Golden Arches appears out of nowhere. If this is where you’re at, then by all means. Get the large drink. But stick to iced tea, because the high fructose corn syrup in the soda will get you in the end.

Fast food is almost always simply not real food. Even “healthy” alternatives are almost never sourced locally, are almost always chemically grown to be as cheap as possible, and in my opinion the “healthy” alternatives almost never taste as good as “real food.”

For me, the biggest problem with fast food is if I’m at a fast food restaurant, and I look at all of the menu items that I could have were I not being more health conscious, it all starts to feel like one big deprivation. That’s not really the feeling I want to have.

2. If you have a beef-based dish, try to order from menus that disclose the source, and buy the best cut you can afford. A lot of restaurants are now disclosing where their beef comes from. It has become a matter of pride and a selling point in many areas of the country. The ideal situation is when you can find a restaurant that serves organic, ethically raised beef. But even at that, you should only order the best they have to offer, even if it means you pay more. The higher grade cut is often leaner, more tender, and prepared with attention to detail. These are all factors that should be appreciated when you’re dining out – so why sell yourself short with the slightly cheaper cut?

3. Deep fried things are rarely real food, so be extremely selective, but be reasonable too. By and large, fries with almost anything pedestrian really are something you should avoid as a matter of habit. They have very little nutritional value, and if you’re like me, they only lead me to eat more than I should. I love fries. But I’m willing to cut 90% of my consumption of them for the sake of my health, and so that I can be around long enough to play with my kids.

That being said, there are exceptions. The occasional French fry is not going to kill you, and in some cases, like deep-fried vegetables, while it is certainly not ideal, it can be an enjoyable indulgence. For example, while we were traveling in New Zealand a few years ago, we happened to arrive during kumara season – a local crop that is a lot like a sweet potato. As a result, kumara was everywhere as a side dish, and in some cases, the main. We would have been fools to pass up the kumara fries with sea salt, so we had them. And I must say, several years later, I don’t regret it one bit.In other words, be reasonable. These habits are part of a lifelong journey, not a micromanaged pass/fail set of tasks.

4. Most creamy salad dressings are rarely real food, unless they’re made in house. If it came out of a bottle, its probably got a list of preservative chemicals.And if the dressing came out of a plastic pouch, you are almost guaranteed that its not in the real food category. There are a handful of quick and easy dressings that you can actually concoct right at your table with ingredients like extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and in some recipes surprise ingredients like 100% orange juice that is often available. You just have to get a little creative. But more on that later.

5. Never eat sugar substitutes or drink chemically produced diet soda. There is all kinds of research on the dangers of eating sugar substitutes including the ones in diet soda. The funny part of this is, a sugar packet, real sugar, has only 14 calories on average. Barely more calories than are consumed when you walk from your table to the rest room. So unless you have a medical condition that says otherwise, have the sugar, just limit it to a moderate, reasonable amount.

For me, I’ve adapted my taste to take one packet, if at all, in things like unsweetened iced tea. Its just a matter of retraining yourself to expect a different taste than the sweeter standards.

For some fascinating reading on the history of food substitutes like Aspartame, and how it was miraculously approved by the FDA despite repeated failure to pass because it was killing lab rats, type, “Aspartame history” into Google. You’ll probably find some questionable conspiracy theorist links, which is why I’m not adding them here, but educate yourself and then make your own decision. I know I have.

6. Don’t eat margarine – eat butter, just less of it. This is one of the quintessential examples of why eating fabricated food products is potentially disastrous. For years nutritionists and corporations encouraged the consumption of margarine over butter, because it hadn’t been proven to do lasting harm to human health. There was no proof that it was actually beneficial in and of itself; it simply hadn’t been proven to be bad, yet.

Well, that has changed. margarine is one of those fake foods that should be avoided for purely health reasons – not to mention the idea that even cockroaches won’t eat it. If you’d like to know more, here’s a link (http://www.stop-trans-fat.com/butter-v-margarine.html) that breaks it down nicely. And regardless of what the margarine corporations might try to spin to get us to buy more, even soft margarine is still not real food, regardless of whether it has chemically less things like trans fats. Don’t buy the sales pitch. Eat the “real” thing – honest to goodness butter – but in moderation.

7. Better yet, if butter comes with that bread, ask for extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar instead. You’ll get the same satiation sensation with olive oil along with the nutritional benefits of olive oil. And that goes for avocado too – eat the avocado. In the big picture, a few extra calories is worth the added health benefits of naturally occurring vegetable fats. And guaranteed – you will never see a label on an avocado that says partially-hydrogenated anything, which is a good thing.

8. And one step further – if you get complimentary bread with the meal – take one piece, and send it back. Unless you’re eating haute cuisine, your entree will in all likelihood be well more than enough. Go ahead and savor the bread if its good quality, but don’t use it as a substitute for the real thing.

9. Don’t forget to have a glass of wine. And if you’re celebrating, indulge – have two. Wine has all sorts of well-publicized health benefits, but it also helps to bring a sense of satisfaction to a meal, and often helps you to identify the sensations of fullness before its too late.

The bottom line

There is a lot more to be added to this list, but if there is one thing to remember, from the opening article of this series, its this:

If your goal is lifelong moderation, don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t eat ideally at every meal, particularly when you are dining out on someone else’s terms.

At every meal you should maintain your focus on eating a reasonable portion of real food, but in the bigger picture we’re really talking about cultivating lifelong habits that you can sustain. So if you’re out with friends and you have that extra slice of pizza absentmindedly, make up for it in the bigger picture of your life by focusing on the good things in the other 95% of the meals you eat that week.

Don’t punish yourself.

We’ve been trying the dietary crime and punishment approach for 30 years, and its not working. It’s time to try something else, like skipping the steamed vegetables.

Next: Dining out in moderation Part 2: Save up and treat yourself to the best meal you can afford!

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