Skinny Liver by Kristin Kirkpatrick

Author:Kristin Kirkpatrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2017-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

Taking Your Healthy Diet on the Road

While setting up a healthy home is essential for a healthy liver, we can’t stay home every day in our comfortable, well-controlled environment. We have jobs, travel plans, social obligations, and schedules that take us out of our environment and throw us into others. To stay on track with your liver-protection plan, you’ll need to arm yourself with tools and tactics to help you survive in the outside world. To help you (and your liver) stay in better shape when you’re relying on someone else to cook your food, take the following steps:

Plan ahead Many restaurants now post their menus and nutritional information online, giving you the opportunity to choose both a restaurant and a meal that will fit into your healthy eating plan. Choose establishments with varied menus and avoid all-you-can-eat buffets or places where fried foods dominate more than half the menu. Once you’ve chosen a restaurant, call ahead and ask such questions as: “Is the chef able to alter menu items based on specific dietary needs or requests?” or “Can I bring my own salad dressing?”

Make reservations when you can If you arrive at a restaurant and discover that there’s an hour’s wait for a table, you’re likely to become extremely hungry even if you had a snack ahead of time. Or, you may head to the bar to grab a drink and maybe have an appetizer while you wait. You may even change your ordering plan when you see and smell what other diners are having. The upshot: All your good planning flies out the window, all because you weren’t able to sit down immediately. Having a reservation can prevent this scenario from occurring. (It’s a good idea to bring along a small snack—such as a single-serving-size bag of almonds—just in case.)

Snack first When you show up at a restaurant feeling ravenous, it’s easy to overeat (especially if you don’t have a reservation and have to wait for a table!). That’s why it’s smart to have a small snack ahead of time. Eating one that includes a protein and a complex carbohydrate (such as low-fat yogurt and berries or hummus and baby carrots) beforehand should help you walk into a restaurant with your restraint intact.

Establish an “at the table” model for success For starters, be the first person at the table to order because peer pressure doesn’t end in high school. Research suggests that if you’re with a group of people, ordering first can help you stay true to what you want to eat and avoid being influenced by what someone else orders. To reduce portions, it helps to find an ally with whom you can split an entrée. Don’t hesitate to create your own meal: People often consider “sides” as ways to enhance their main course, but you can put together a healthy, plant-based meal by combining a couple of side dishes that appeal to you, in place of ordering an entrée.

Question your server (but don’t be a jerk) Don’t be shy about asking questions to determine what’s really in a particular dish.

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