Is Eating at Restaurants Contributing to Your Weight Gain?
Everyone loves going to a restaurant to eat some delicious food and relax while someone else does all of the cooking and cleaning for a change. But, if you eat at restaurants too often, it might be contributing to your weight gain.
The information below explains how weight gain and eating at restaurants can be connected, and why you should focus more on creating yummy, nutritious meals at home as often as possible.
Serving Sizes Are Huge
The majority of the time that you eat at a restaurant, you will be served way too much food. According to SF Gate, a serving size at a restaurant could be a few times the normal, healthy serving size that you should be getting. Plus, it can be worse if you have access to endless bread or French fries, if you’re at a buffet and you go overboard, or if you have an appetizer, dinner, and dessert. Why do restaurants serve so much food? Because they want to give people the best value for their money to keep them coming back for more.
You Are More Likely to Overeat
Because you are paying for your food, and it could be expensive, you are also more likely to overeat when you are at a restaurant. Combine this fact with the one discussed above about serving sizes being bigger than they should and you have a recipe for weight gain.
The Food Isn’t as Healthy as You Think
Sure, you can ask for nutrition facts on foods that you are thinking about ordering at a restaurant, but there is no guarantee that the numbers you’ll be given will be accurate. In fact, meals at restaurants often have loads more calories than are listed on a nutrition facts label. This reduces the amount of control that you have if you are counting calories in an effort to avoid weight gain.
What Can You Do?
If you wish to avoid weight gain while eating at restaurants, limit the number of times that you don’t prepare your meals at home. Then, when you do dine out, be sure to choose restaurants that serve healthy options, and take steps like asking for dressing on the side, asking that they don’t bring out the endless bread, and avoiding sugary drinks while sticking with plain water. These small steps can really add up and put you in greater control over what you eat, as well as how much you eat, while enjoying yourself at a restaurant.
