Dining Out on a Diet

This week on the podcast, we are talking about dining out on a diet. As a person that lives alone (for now), I hate cooking for myself. I can’t just cook for one person, so I end up making a massive recipe for something and I eat it for five days straight or until I get tired of it. I eat out or order Uber Eats a lot. I got into the habit when I moved out to the Dallas area and began working downtown within reach of many different restaurants.

 
When I first had bariatric surgery and slipped into a low-carb diet back in 2019, I found there were limited options for eating out. Of course, I can give many reasons why you shouldn’t eat out when you are on a special diet, but life circumstances have taught me over the years that you sometimes cannot avoid eating out, especially when you travel a lot or commute for work.  In a previous blog, I wrote about my method for choosing travel snacks on a special diet that I prepared on my vacation last summer, and I will touch on that later on in this blog.

Here are my tips for dining out:

Know your diet.

• This is important when you are trying a new diet. I keep it pretty simple and go for only meat, veggies, and a bit of cheese when it comes to my diet. In my coffee, I like unsweetened almond milk and maybe a little packet of sugar-free sweetener, but often I leave it out.

Have a go-to list of places you can eat.

• I mentioned in my previous blog that I made a list of restaurants that I could go to on vacation when Jason and I went on our road trip. I also have a go-to list of restaurants I can eat at around my work, and a list of restaurants I can order takeout when I am at home. These lists save me time when I need something quick.  A few years ago, I commuted an hour to work and another hour and a half to two hours home again every day. I would often get home late and be too tired to cook. I had to keep a go-to list of restaurants that I could order from or eat on the way if I didn’t have ready meals at home. Usually, I stopped by the grocery store by my house (pre-covid it was open 24 hours) and bought a ready meal or a pre-packaged salad that I could eat for supper.

Have a go-to list of snacks that you can eat at work or on your commute.

• A lot of times I wait too long to eat. If I do that, I begin to get/feel sick. I had to start carrying snacks in my backpack or purse along with a protein bar that I could eat when I was feeling hungry. My favorite go-to snack is trail mix or raw almonds. I will also carry a package of raw vegetables with me for a quick pick-me-up. I keep a list of gas stations that carry the type of protein drinks I drink and easy snacks I can buy if I am desperate. Before our trip, I bought snacks in advance in case I got caught in a pinch.

Don’t be afraid to go off your diet if you have to.

• This one is BIG. Oftentimes we beat ourselves up if we go off our diet. I have been in plenty of special circumstances where I have waited too long to eat and HAD to eat something that wasn’t necessarily on my diet (or healthy for me). If you are dieting to lose weight, a one-day slip will not ruin you for life. If you have the self-control to have a “cheat day,” more power to you. If you are afraid of slipping up. Don’t forget your travel snacks!

Tomorrow is a new day.

• When you are on a diet, a great mantra to have is “tomorrow is a new day” because it really is! If you mess up one day, you are not messed up forever. You can always start over. This, of course, can apply to anything you have going on in your life. Tomorrow is definitely a new day.

In conclusion, there is no perfect method for eating out if you are on a special diet. I can only tell you what I have learned in the past three and a half years. Do I stick to my diet all the time? No. However, I do tell myself that it isn’t the end of the world and I can always start over. That mantra has helped me keep my weight loss steady. 

I want to hear from our readers! What are your eating-out tips and tricks? Do you have any favorite restaurants that you eat at if you are on a special diet? Comment below!

My Favorite Flavor

If you know me, you know I am a sucker for weird holidays. Did you know that March is “National Peanut Awareness” month? According to Peanut Allergy Facts, about four percent of teens and adults have peanut allergies. Peanuts have always had an important role in my life. Another little-known fact about me: My family, and by extension I mean “I”, owns a peanut farm.

My whole life, I have always said “my family” because I never felt part of that equation. I have always felt far removed from that scenario as it never seemed possible t that I would inherit the farm; the farm would never make it past my mom’s generation. Then, my mom died, and now I own half of a farm.

Going back generations, my family had always been farmers. My mom even grew up on the farm until my grandparents moved permanently to town when she was in college. That was when they allowed someone else to farm their land for a share of the profits. The farm grew other things besides peanuts depending on the season and who was in charge of farming it. Somehow, though, the farm was always there in the background. We visited it during crop seasons, and my grandparents dealt with the taxes. 

Growing up, I have many memories involving peanuts. Mid-fall, whenever the crop was harvested, my grandmother would receive bags of raw peanuts that she liked to shell herself. So, I would sit with my Maw Maw and shell peanuts; I began to hate peanuts.

As I mentioned in my last blog, I grew up poor. A staple in many less-fortunate households is peanut butter and white bread. Peanut butter is pretty sustainable and if you are hungry, it can be satisfying on the cheap. Aside from peanut butter sandwiches, we ate peanut butter and saltine crackers almost every day. To this day, my grandma still likes peanut butter and saltine crackers for an afternoon snack and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.

After I moved out, I didn’t eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because they reminded me of my childhood and poverty. Then things changed. Three years ago, I had a life-changing surgery that altered the way that I eat and taste food (watch for a blog post in the near future). If you ask me to name my favorite thing to eat, my answer now will be peanut butter (or any kind of nut butter, really). Why? Quite simply, my taste buds changed, or adapted, since I started my weight-loss journey. Despite my earlier disdain, I am obsessed with the flavor. It no longer represents poverty but protein, and protein is life-sustaining. Nuts and nut butter were among the few things my stomach could tolerate post-surgery, and I enjoyed a bite of peanut butter as a “sweet escape” if I wanted something to curb my cravings.

It’s funny how we tend to avoid certain things that remind us of our childhood. It’s not like peanuts held a particular trauma for me. I may have simply not enjoyed the taste. I’m thankful now that I can look back at unshelled peanuts and be reminded of my Maw Maw but I will always buy them shelled in the store.

My favorite ways to eat nut butter:

• Perfect Bars™: Perfect Bar™  is an organic, gluten-free, high-protein bars made out of nut butter. They offer many different flavors at your local grocery store, but my favorite will always be the dark chocolate chip.
• Spread on a keto waffle: One of my favorite things to make is a Birch Bender’s® keto waffle. You can buy waffle mix or ready-made frozen waffles. I like to pair my waffle with Fix and Fogg Everything Butter®.
• Keto Peanut Butter Balls: I use this recipe from Beaming Baker, and I like to use Swerve®, sweetener, and 365 Organic Creamy Peanut Butter®.
• Keto Fat Bombs: I recommend this recipe from That Low Carb Life using Swerve® and Lily’s® baking chips.
• As a dip with Cauliflower Pretzels: My favorite cauliflower pretzels are From the Ground Up®.
• Keto Peanut Butter Pie: I found this recipe from All Day I Dream About Food using the same keto ingredients mentioned above.
• Keto PBJ: My favorite keto bread is Chompie’s®, and my favorite sugar-free jam is Good Good®.
• Smoothie King Keto Champ Coffee™: I love a good protein shake and this smoothie features almond butter.
• Premier Protein™  Chocolate Peanut Butter Shake: I can’t leave this out because protein shakes are a part of my everyday life now.

I also want to give a small-business shout-out to Spread Happiness Nut Butters and their keto-butter products as well as Ten Berries and their low-sugar jams. I first ran across these businesses at the Denton Community Market a few years ago when I moved back to the area.

I want to hear from my readers. Do you like peanut butter? What are some of your favorite peanut recipes? E-mail me at modernmusingsmmc@gmail.com and share your recipes with me.

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