How to Prepare to Eat Healthy At a Restaurant

Today I had a lunch meeting at a restaurant. Since experience is a tough teacher, giving one the test first and the lesson afterwards, I'd like to share what I learned.

1) The first place I like to go to check out a restaurant is the online resource (also found in book form) from Men's Health called "Eat This, Not That." There's a section there that lists various chain restaurants. Regardless of the restaurant's "grade," you can click on the link to that restaurant and get some tips for how to eat healthy there. You can often see the menu of the restaurant. Unfortunately, today's restaurant was not listed and so I moved on to option #2.

2) Use the resource above to find a similar type restaurant (in this case, Chinese) and pick up some tips that might be transferable. I learned to avoid (or severely limit) the amount of rice I consume. In fact, I didn't even eat my rice today.

3) Get to the restaurant early to look over the menu before your business associates arrive. This is the lesson that I learned today AFTER the fact!

Yes, I ordered a decent meal (Vegetarian Delight, even though I'm not actually a vegetarian) by following the lead of a colleague who clearly knows his Chinese options better than I. But on my way out I picked up a carry-out menu and soon realized that they had a whole "Healthy Options" section on the back that I could have easily chosen from! Had I just gotten to the restaurant a little earlier, I probably would have seen the section before I ordered.

4) Another option might have been to ask our server, when she asked for our drink orders, if they had a healthier section on the menu. Didn't think of that either!

The irony in all of this is that the meeting was specifically for the purpose of discussing how to encourage fellow pastors to live more physically healthy lives! Yet here we were meeting in a type of restaurant that, while tasty, is notoriously short on healthy options and tends to serve overly large portions.

It just goes to show that real life isn't always ideal and sometimes (okay, most times!) we just have to make the best of it.

Oh...but there's almost always a lesson or two to be learned, even if it's after the test has already been taken!

Hoping you've learned something here you'll use next time you eat out.
Kent