Saturday’s overeating was mild, and the main culprit was the impulse banana I had at the finish of my 10K race. I just couldn’t say no to this delicious sugar and potassium filled snack after running for 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Considering that I had just burned 887 calories with the running the banana was justified. I had a mild lunch with eggs, whole wheat toast and some mixed vegetables that clocked in at 585 calories so I thought I was in the clear and I managed to offset the banana. And had we not gone out to Carino’s Italian Grill for dinner I would have been just fine. But dinner ended up being 846 calories in itself which is a light fare when you consider that I just went to an Italian restaurant where my favorite dish, Chicken Milano, clocks in at a respectable 1,418 calories, 824 of which comes from fat. Considering my entire meal consisted as much calories as there is fat calories in my once loved meal I think I did awesome. Oh, and I didn’t count the 2 loaves of bread that I used to devour before salad or soup would even hit the table. This time I had no bread.

Sunday’s eating was a completely different story. I didn’t have a banana at a race, we didn’t go to Carino’s for dinner. But we did go to the zoo with the kids and when we go to the zoo it also means we’ll have lunch at Panera Bread. Panera Bread is conveniently located right across from the zoo so we stop in every time on our way home. My wife loves sandwich café places like Panera Bread, Corner Bakery or La Madeline. I went for my usual order which ends up at 540 calories usually. Unfortunately this time I couldn’t stop myself and ate the baguette piece that came with my meal as well and added another 180 calories to my meal. So now instead of my usual 540 I ended up at 720 calories for lunch.

After the 180 excess calorie lunch I still felt I was under control and had I stuck with the plan of eating light for dinner with some lean meat or fish and some steamed veggies I would have been perfectly fine. But this is where the crêpes come in the picture. My family loves crêpes. But we’re not the “let’s go to the mall and stuf our faces full of crêpes” kind of people. We’re more the “Daddy, I’d like crêpes, can you make some please?” kind of people. So my son was pretty persistent with the crêpe request and who can blame him? It’s not like I make crêpes every weekend or even every month. It’s more like a twice a year deal where I succumb to making crêpes.

Making crêpes is not really that big of a deal. But for some reason it always seems too time consuming and we abandon the idea before we’d even make the batter. But once you get down to it it’s really not much worse than making any other meal. The toughest part is the part where you have to flip the crêpe from one side to the other and this is where you can really screw it up and you can end up with a lump of flour paste instead of a nice flat crêpe. My wife, as great and awesome of a cook she is, simply will not make crêpes because of this very fear of screwing up the flip and producing rejects. So crêpe making in my family is a man’s job.

In my home country we actually have a signature dish that is made with crêpes and it’s not a dessert. It’s actually a meat filled crêpe. My son obviously prefers the Nutella filled variety over the meat filled one but I actually love crêpes both sweet and savory. Since they take the same crêpe I made a large batch of crêpes while my wife made the meat filling, 85/15 turkey instead of veal, and we also made a sweet filling from farmer’s cheese mixed with granulated sugar and lemon zest for sweet crêpes.

I would usually eat 4 or 5 of the meat filled crêpes and I’d probably have another 2 of the sweet ones as dessert but this time I had two of the meat filled ones (610 calories) and one of the cheese filled dessert ones (264 calories). I also ate a good amount of steamed veggies to go with it and fill me up. So the crêpes did me in when you combined it with some heavy lunch from Panera Bread. I just couldn’t resist the thin crust over the minced meat and the creamy sweet filling for dessert.

But to prove that all this can be done in a moderated fashion I had leftovers of the crêpes today. Two meat filled ones with steamed broccoli and cauliflower as sides for lunch and one with the cheese filling for dessert after my shrimp with rice and veggies dinner. And today I only had 1,803 calories even though I had the same three crêpes as yesterday. The difference was the low cal dinner of shrimp with moderate portion of rice and the lighter breakfast of yogurt and nuts instead of the eggs and toast. So I think I got the crêpe craving out of my system for at least another 4 months. As for my son, he had one of the meat filled ones yesterday for dinner and one of the cheese filled ones today and yesterday for dessert. I’m just glad he liked the meat filled one too.

A proper diet is the most important aspect of the healthy lifestyle trinity; diet, strength training and cardio exercise. And this is the part where a lot of people fall short or sabotage themselves, their goals and progress. I have seen a lot of people going to the gym then eat a juicy burger with fries afterward and wash it down with a large soft drink. I have seen people crossing the finish line at the 5K race and head straight for the cookies and Gatorade at the recovery table instead of the carrots and water. I have seen people stepping off the elliptical machine to gulp down 400 calories worth of “recovery drink”. And I have heard of numerous people doing a P90X training program but ignoring the nutritional booklet that comes with it.

I can safely say that I am trying to stay on top of my diet. I have no cheat meals, no cheat days, no cheat weeks. I just have healthy eating day in day out. But there are times when you get a curve ball thrown at you and you just have to roll with it. Eating out with family and friends can definitely be a huge curve ball.

Every time we have a birthday lunch at work I get very concerned. I’m hoping that the birthday person will pick something healthy and I would feel comfortable picking a food item off the menu but usually people are quite inconsiderate of my food choices when they pick their birthday lunch. It’s their birthday after all. So how can you cope with this kind of problem?

I could simply say “no thank you” and not go. But somehow I feel that is not the right thing to do. I want to be part of the team and partake in the company lunch. So I am obligated to go. I could always just go but not eat. I have a co-worker who does just that. He will go out with the rest of the lunch crowd and have an ice tea with no sugar and just partake in the social aspect of the lunch. But he definitely gets a lot of crap for it every time. I on the other hand love to go out. But I always fear the menu and I feel like restaurants are like a box of chocolate: you just don’t know what you’re gonna get.

I’m getting better and better at navigating the menus at restaurants and I can put together a mental image of what every item probably contains calorie and nutrient wise. I always try to look up the restaurant’s menu and hopefully nutritional guide on-line before we arrive to the place. If nutritional guide is not available I will try to find nutritional information for a similar restaurant and go with their estimates. I mean a fajita is a fajita and probably contains similar amounts of meat regardless which restaurant prepared it.

Like my favorite Mexican restaurant Uncle Julio’s does not provide nutritional information. But On The Border does. So I am pretty sure I need to stay away from the chips and salsa regardless of which one I end up at. I also know that eating 4 flour tortillas is probably not the best thing to eat and maybe two should be a wiser decision.

Then you also have the situation when you check out their menu and nutritional guide at home, go to the place and they don’t serve what you picked out. Panera Bread claims to be healthy eating. They are, as long as you stick with their vegetarian black bean soup, which is very tasty, and half a Frontega Chicken Pannini. But if you go on a Sunday instead of a Saturday they don’t serve vegetarian black bean soup. Instead they have sugar infested tomato soup or saturated fat horror baked potato soup. So what do you do? You suck it up and roll with it. It is not the end of the world and you just make the best decision you can.

Sometimes I go to a restaurant that I used to visit often but have not been back in a long time, especially since my lifestyle change. These places can be a total crap shoot. You can walk in all confident believing that you know the menu and end up sorely disappointed with the once loved food. This actually happened to me at Razzoo’s just a couple of weeks ago. You can also find a pleasant surprise and find a completely different section of the menu with food selections you would have never considered in a million years before.

Sometimes I end up at restaurants that I have never visited before. And they also tend to be hole in the wall time establishments that don’t even have a website let alone nutritional guides. So you go and fly blind. You hope for the best and you make the best of it. The office group recently visited a restaurant called Yucatan Taco Stand. They make decent burrito bowls and fish tacos but they don’t provide nutritional information. I was going to order something extravagant off their menu had I known the nutritional value but since I was clueless I stuck with a burrito bowl instead and used Chipotle’s nutrition guide to estimate the calories. I have also tried to contact the restaurant via e-mail but they chose not to respond to my query.

So as much as I love eating out nowadays it’s a mixed feeling every time the office party decides to go out. I feel like I’m out of my comfort zone and it puts me into a new challenge every time. I love challenges but I feel the rewards are not always worth it. So how do you feel about eating out when on a diet? What do you do? Do you have any advice for me how to tackle situations like this?

For dinner I had Filet Mignon again. The prime $30/lbs kind. This stuff is good. I had sirloin a week or so ago and it was bad. Once you’re hooked on prime Filet you do not want to eat the sirloin any more. Which is a shame considering this stuff costs three times as much. But with all the saturated fat in it it might not be a bad thing that I only eat it every once in a while and stick with chicken otherwise. To offset the excess calories I gave up on brown rice and ate it with only steamed veggies.

So the fatty lunch and fatty dinner explain why my carbs had to be so low just to fit into my diet.