Quote Originally Posted by Susan Otcenas View Post
Roxy,

Not answering your question directly, but... I've found that not eating out hardly at all over the past few months has been what's worked for me. There's so much hidden fat, sugar, salt, etc in restaurant food. And it's really hard to estimate portion sizes.

If I *do* eat out, I ask for a to-go box to be delivered to the table along with my meal. I immediately put 1/2 of whatever is on my plate into the to-go box, before I've eaten anything. That way, I'm not tempted to overeat.

Usually I don't eat the other half at all. Jeff typically will eat if for lunch the next day.

Susan
My aunt and uncle did that, sort of. They'd go to a restaurant together and share an entree, and they both lost quite a bit of weight doing that. I cant' convince D*H to do this, though. Alas.

I think limiting eating out to one meal per week is really helping. It's also encouraging me to cook more, so I'm exploring healthy recipes and we're eating a lot more organic veggies. This is working pretty well. I like to cook.

Last night I made what started out to be beef stew, but turned into steak soup. Beef chunks, seared in a frying pan with salt, pepper, and Worchestire sauce - did I spell that right? Then I put that into the crock pot and added a half-bag of frozen organic sweet corn, a half-bag of organic broccoli, and three tomatoes I had left that I hadn't used in a salad yet. I cut those into the soup and let it cook for about three hours, served it over rice with Ezekiel bread toast. It was really good.

I could have made it even healthier without the carbs, I guess. Zucchini instead of corn, yellow squash instead of rice, but I've got a husband and daughter to feed, too, and they tell me they need more substance. Go figure.

Roxy