Yes, I Want Fries With That!

I've mentioned that I am trying to be a little careful with my eating while I am travelling. One thing that helped a lot is some of the restaurants and fast food joints that post the calorie count of the food on the menu. Most places don’t do it, I found it more common in New York, but it is so handy. I know I shouldn’t need the calories listed to make me realise getting fries is a bad thing, but it does make it hit home. I really changed the way I ordered when I was faced with the calorie listing because a lot of the food just wasn’t worth the extreme amount of calories.

We were in Starbucks one day and AJ was getting a latte and I start looking at the food and thinking of getting a hot chocolate and a piece of cake as a snack, just because it was there. Then I saw the calories in those suckers were more than I should be eating in a day and they didn’t even look that good, so I just got my tea and left. I didn’t feel deprived because I just don’t think it is worth it. Another day we were in Central Park and it was hot, so I wanted an ice cream (because I am like a child) and the creamy cookie dough ice cream I was looking at getting had about 400 calories and a snow cone had 30 calories, I really didn’t care which I got because I just wanted something cool and so obviously I got the snow cone and saved myself a heap of calories.

The other day AJ bought an American fast food and restaurant calorie counter book and it has really helped us a lot. We just went to Red Robin for lunch and we saw a huge onion ring tower being brought out to another table. We both looked at each other and got excited because we just love onion rings. So we pulled out the little calorie counter book to see what the damage was and we were shocked to see that one serving was 1837 calories and 124 grams of fat. In one tiny serving. Now I am not a complete party pooper, there is nothing wrong with indulging in these things if you are doing it once a week, but we are eating out for every meal of every day and so we have to be a bit careful.

After years of dieting, I thought I was pretty good at guessing what the healthier items on the menu are. Clearly the onion rings are never going to be good and anything with the word creamy, fried or mayo is best to avoid as well, but I have still been surprised when looking up meals in this calorie counter book. Foods I would have ordered because they seemed ‘clean’ and ‘whole’ aren’t at all. Can you imagine what a difference it would make if all restaurants made the calories of the food on their menus available to customers?

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Please feel free to leave me any tips or ideas you have for keeping healthy while you are travelling or let me know your favourite 'healthy' fast food (or not so healthy too, I'm not a complete saint)! 

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I would love to be facebook friends but don't want to publish my real name, if you want to be friends too send me an email with your name and I'll friend you: prettyif@gmail.com 

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Also, I have been catching up on blogs lately, what in the world is this BOOBS thing in Chicago??? Sounds like fun, I want to go!!!