Can You Eat Restaurant Food And Still Have A Body You Love?

Here's what you need to know about restaurant food:

Healthy -- and no drive through

I took my family on a trip to Australia. The minute we got off the plane something was obvious. The people weren't as fat. Not nearly.

There were three things I noticed about Australia that were different:

Calories and fat burning

Now, you might know somebody that eats drive-through food -- you know, the greasy burgers, fries, shakes, tacos, all of that -- and they stay skinny. What about that, huh?

Well, that is them. That is not you. Maybe they can, I don't know. But I know this…

YOU can't eat drive-through junk food or greasy restaurant food and lose weight and keep it off.

There's two reasons for this:

Learn to burn fat

You have to build a strong fat-burning machine -- your body, see, has got to be a fat burning machine -- or you're not going to get anywhere.

You have to teach it to burn fat. You have to make it burn fat!

That fat (sorry to have to say this) is sitting there on your butt and thighs, and you are stuck with it unless you teach your body to burn it.

And one way NOT to teach your body to burn fat is to eat in restaurants.

Tons of sugar, tons of fat

See, your body knows things. And one of the things it knows is that when you dump in a high-calorie drive through meal with tons of fat and hidden sugar, that it doesn't need to burn fat.

Especially because it tasted so good, you're going back tomorrow for the same thing.

Now, I can hear it already, "But I'm just having the salad with the Diet Coke."

Well, Diet Coke is another matter.

Middle age weight loss

Let me tell you, there's a group of people I know, some are my patients, some friends, some I see at meetings. They are mostly middle aged.

Most of them are concerned about their mental and physical health. Most of them are doing good things is life -- hard working, intelligent, concerned people. They're good responsible people.

Most of them are overweight.

And they don't know why.

They say they don't eat too much. Ask them and they say, "Oh, I eat good. I eat healthy."

So I say what do you eat?

"I don't eat much. I don't eat any breakfast. I'm not hungry in the morning."

This is a real killer. You can't make a fat burning machine without breakfast.

Watch the juice

One guy -- he's proud of himself, he thinks he's doing the right thing -- he says, "I'm on a juice fast." Juice fast?

Or how about, "I drink a protein drink everyday for lunch."

What's in that "protein" drink? In this case it was full of fruit. Banana. Orange juice. Two or three large servings of fruit everyday. That's a lot of sugar.

Contrary to popular belief too much juice isn't healthy. Why? It's the fructose.

Fructose has been shown -- at least in animal studies -- to induce "insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance... and hypertension..." (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 76, No. 5, 911-922, November 2002, Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome.)

Killer salad

Or one guy said, "I just have a salad at lunch and some meat."

So I went to the restaurant where he ate everyday. I had a salad and a quesadilla. It was very good. Sounds like a light snack, doesn't it?

The cook was very excellent -- Italian, beautiful accent. He made everything so good, a touch of oregano, plenty of cheese, fresh vegetables. Hmmm. Wonderful.

And he had olive oil. You know it's good to cook with olive oil. It's the best oil for your heart. You know that.

He had a gallon of olive oil. At least he had a gallon when he started.

But a few salads later, his olive oil was getting low.

The salad got drenched with it. I mean drenched. Then a little vinegar. Then some spices.

Good? Yes. Knock-your-socks-off good.

Healthy? Yes, healthy enough. But...

Calories from oil

But the calories. How about 6 or 8 tablespoons of oil? That is 750-1000 hidden calories!

Even if you try to watch what you eat, it will catch up with you.

It is super easy to gain 10 pounds in a year without even noticing.

Do that a few times, and you will be 30 or 40 pounds overweight. Easy to happen.

A few more, you're looking at 100 pounds overweight! And you end up sitting there 100 pounds over your ideal weight wondering how the heck that ever happened.

If you eat one hundred calories extra each day you gain 10 pounds extra each year. That's 10 pounds of fat.

How about 1000 extra calories? Hard to believe? From a salad?!!

The salad -- delicious! The quesadilla -- wonderful! The calories -- awful!

So, it's okay to go once in a while and have that luscious Italian meal. But save it for a treat -- maybe once a week. Once a month is better.

Restaurant food? It will kill any hopes you have of losing weight and keeping it off.

Popular articles: