Adrian

[morrow45]

I am on day 10 of 12 week weight program. I have radically changed my diet with 5 a day fruit and veg. I find eating out a problem although it's usually once. Month. Going to Dublin for a few days break and to see Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons. Will need to watch what I eat and monitor calorie intake while I am away.

[Hidden]

Eating out is definitely difficult as you want to still have a good time. Try to still have a bit of what you want, but selecting healthy options as much as poss and watching out for oversized portions. When I went away recently I took a bag of apples and a bag of clementines to make sure I had fruit with me all the time which really helped.

[sueper]

I eat out with friends once a month. I am fairly careful what I select but mostly I have altered what I drink. I used to have about 3 glasses of full fat coke. Now I just have water - it is really easy to maintain if you are eating too.

[Hidden in reply to sueper]

I've also altered what I drink and agree this is an easy change to make. I actually went to an event with free beer and I picked up one of the bottles of water instead! I also have things like white wine spritzer, virgin marys, tonic water without the gin, or if I have alcohol I alternate it with glasses of water between, to sort of slow me down.

[bradrid]

A good rule of thumb when eating out is the low carb, high protein approach. Avoid pasta, white rice, bread, and potatoes and choose meats like chicken, steak, fish, pork and have an extra portion of veg to replace the potatoes or rice or pasta that it may have ordinarily come with. Avoid refined sugars found in pastries, chocolate and biscuits of all types. Nuts such as walnuts, almonds and peanuts are fine as are eggs, peanut butter (which you can snack on using celery sticks dipped in the peanut butter when peckish at no carb cost virtually) all fish (which is classed as a super food in low carb land) and rather wonderfully beer - which is low in carbs. You do need to be careful of this approach though if you're a gout sufferer as high protein foods can often be high in purines, so be mindful of that when considering this advice. I find it useful so I thought I'd pass it on.

You may also want to consider a meal replacement diet such as the Cambridge diet?

It's very effective but it does cost to purchase the meal replacements. A lot of people tend to come to it as something of a last resort and then wish they had come to it first after many other futile diets have been tried out and failed to deliver.