Eating Out VS Eating At Home

I received a comment on my Weekly WI post from Rebecca.  Thanks for the comment Rebecca.  It got me thinking that I would like to share with you more about how I eat out.  Obviously nothing is one-size-fits-all.  However, in the last almost eight years since I have joined WW I have learned a lot about myself and about how I navigate eating out to stay successful to my WW program.  In the future I'll try and share more when I actually have an eating out venture.

Here is Rebecca’s comment: “Congrats on your recent successes! I know you enjoy eating out, but I think this speaks to the fact that you would perhaps have more success if you ate out less. It's just so easy to overindulge at restaurants and you have more control of what and how much you eat at home. What are your thoughts?”

I replied on my blog post but I’ll share more here as well.  It is a fact that I am not going to give up eating out.  Sometimes I enjoy not having to cook.  Sometimes I get bored with the same old food/leftovers at home.  Sometimes I like being super social.  Sometimes I just enjoy that time out of the house with my husband.  There are many reasons I enjoy eating out and while I can always scale back I won’t ever stop doing it.  I just enjoy it too much and life is meant to be enjoyed.

I have TONS of tips for eating out.  I have shared many before on the blog.  I have had two successful eating out endeavors recently that I will share with you.  Both involve pancakes!

Saturday night/early Sunday morning I met Kenyon for breakfast at IHOP.  I had done a lot of pre-planning beforehand and also looked up the PPVs.  I also looked up items on the menu.  I was interested in an omelet and I knew I would be cashing in my free short stack of panckaes that I got for doing the survey from our last visit (i.e. I'm a panckae hoarder).  I read on the menu that you could order your omelet with egg substitute and ask for less cheese.  I confirmed with the waitress that I could in fact get egg substitute and the ham and cheese omelet I was ordering also had a cheese sauce in addition to shredded cheese.  I asked for the omelet without the sauce and just the regular cheese.

I knew I would be eating most, if not all, of my omelet so I had planned to take my pancakes home.  My omelet came with three pancakes so I ordered all six (yes…six total between the three from my meal and the three free short stack) in a to-go box telling the waitress I would be eating them through the week.  I had no problems and the waitress was very accommodating.  I ended up eating half a pancake with my beloved IHOP strawberry syrup and after the waitress teased me about getting into my “stash” she actually provided me with the to-go containers for some strawberry syrup.  It was awesome!

 

I ended up eating my whole omelet, half the pancake, and having a few bites of Kenyon’s potato soup.  I used the last of my WPPA for this meal and my rough guess for all of it was 18 points.  Yes 18 points is a lot.  However, I had the WPPA available, I ordered and ate what I really wanted, and I balanced it with the rest of my week.  To me, this is success.  The pancakes are in the freezer for another day and another meal.

Early Tuesday morning, I used the same practice with our visit to Denny’s.  I ordered the build-your-own slam picking two eggs cooked over medium, one chicken patty, one slice of ham, and two whole wheat pancakes.  Kenyon ordered an omelet and we subbed his hash browns and toast for two more whole wheat pancakes.  I asked for the to-go box right away and again told the waiter I’d be eating them through the week at home.  He put two-and-two-together and since I ordered no butter on the pancakes asked if I wanted sugar free syrup.  He was very accommodating.  I ate one egg and cut around the other yolk eating only the egg whites on the second egg.  I had half the chicken sausage patty and half the ham slice.  I also ate have a pancake.  The rest was taken home for another meal.  Since I had three cups of coffee and two glasses of water with my meal I was plenty full and very satisfied.  I used 10 WPPA on this meal.  It is the start of my WW week so I had 49 WPPA available.  Again I was very satisfied with my decisions and my meal and I count myself as successful.

Eating out can be a big points-plus-bomb.  There are lots of unknowns and lots of temptations.  However, eating out doesn’t have to be a minefield that you shy away from because you are afraid of adding up the PPVs.  It WILL cost you more PPVs to eat out vs. eat at home.  It takes some pre-planning and some evaluation of what you really want to eat.

Rebecca also comments perhaps I could lose more if I ate out less.  Perhaps.  If you eat in or if you eat out, the food still has to tally up to the same DPA, WPPA, and APs you have for the week.  With weight loss, one never really knows how fast it will come off.  I do know one thing.  Since being over goal, weight loss has felt like a struggle.  Five weeks ago I made a commitment to 100% tracking.  I didn’t decide to go to extremes to lose my excess weight.  I’ve done that before.  Earlier in the year I was losing at a very slow pace and eventually I just gave up.  For the last five weeks I have been eating what I want but also paying attention to my PPVs and my tracking.  The weight is coming off.  I lost 3 pounds my first week, had three losses in three weeks, and now five weeks later I lost 1.4 pounds.  That 1.4 pounds included eating out a few meals this week.  I used all 30 DPA, everyday, and all of my 49 WPPA.  The only activity I did last week was 24 hours of show shoveling. 

We don’t have to go to extremes to lose weight.  I have been there and done that and I just don’t want to go back to that.  I have recently been talking with Kenyon about my weight loss journey.  I don’t think a person can lose over 100 pounds with going to some sort of extremes.  To lose my weight I had to go low points and low nutrition.  That is just how the WW program is built.  However, I made the switch to paying attention to the quality of my food and that has helped me so much more than just worrying about the amount of fat in a food.  Instead I want to know WHERE the fat source is coming from.  I want to know what makes up the PPVs of that food because the sheer fact that it is high in PPVs doesn’t mean the food isn’t a good food. 

As always with anything I put in my mouth, “is it worth it?”  Eating out to me is ALWAYS worth it.  We all have to do what works for us.

Thank you again for the comment Rebecca.  You got me thinking for sure.