Portion Distortion

Save money and your waistline all at the same time.

It’s the last week of summer and your running around getting ready for the new school year with all your “back to school” basics. After a 3rd trip to Target you finally look down at your watch and realize that it’s already 9 o’clock! You figure that you don’t have time to go home and cook dinner and to be completely honest with yourself, you’re just too damn tired from the long day of shopping. The Chili’s that’s caddy corner to good ‘ol Target catches your eye and you decide to go in and sit down. Not your best choice, but not your worst either. Resturants have not only added pounds of additives and other, well… shit, to their foods, but portion sizes have exploded. While staying home and cooking just nine meals a week as opposed to eating them out can save you about 3,000 calories and quite a few buckeroos, it can be tough to find the time. So when you do decide to grab a bite over at Chili’s let me give you a few pointers before you dig into your Crispy Honey-Chipotle Crispers (my ex-favorite entree). While the chicken strips may look delicious and at the same time, quite innocent, be prepepared to hit the gym tomorrow. Quite hard I may add, if you have the desire to burn off the 1,930 calories which are now sitting in your belly. One way to avoid taking in jaw dropping amounts of calories and fat from resturant disasters like that is to know about them before hand. Since this is usually not easy to do, here’s a few tips to help keep your waist slim and your wallet fat:

• Ask for a to-go box when you first order your food and set aside half (or as much as you think you can live without) before you dig in. Not only will this save you a few extra cals, but also some cash by replacing a meal with your leftovers the next day.
• This one’s for when you go out with a group, or on a date with a special lady friend. Instead of ordering seperate entrees, order a few appetizers and split them amongst yourselves. This also saves you some room to throw in a little dessert to divvy-up at the end.
• A bonus tip for at home snacking. Instead of grabbing the bag of Doritos and mindlessly munching from it, pour some into a small bowl and take it back to the couch with you. This will keep you from devouring the whole bag without realizing it while also leaving you satisfied because you were able to eat every last chip in front of you. OR you could just skip the fatty doritos all together and whip up one of the quick and healthy snacks from my previous post :)

Incorperate these tips when you wander out into the resturant world and save yourself about 50 pounds of body fat and over 10 times that in money in just 1 year. It’s a good thing too cause you’ll have to add some new, smaller clothes to the “back to school” shopping list!