You are trying to lose weight and are about to go out for dinner. What do you choose? Salad or vegetables, vegetarian pasta or veal masala? So much depends on how it’s been cooked and what’s been added. Vegetarian pasta in a tomato-based sauce with a salad sounds low in kilojoules but if the vegetables are pre-roasted in oil, the tomato sauce has been laced with cream, the salad is swimming in dressing and cheese smothers the lot, perhaps good old meat and vegetables would have been a better choice. Here are a few healthy eating out tips to help you skip the lurking kilojoules in restaurant food.

• Order water for the table and drink at least one glass for every glass of wine. This helps to fill you up and slow down your eating – and drinking!
• Order plain bread (or toast at breakfast) with the butter or olive oil served separately. Garlic, herb or pizza bread has the fat already added.
• If the meal you are ordering comes with a sauce, ask if it is creamy. Even tomato sauces are often ‘finished’ with cream. A 50 ml dash of cream (less than ¼ cup) adds an extra five teaspoons of fat to the sauce!
• The same applies to soup. Ask if it is made with cream. Even tomato and vegetable soups sometimes have cream or butter added.
• Poached eggs are a good egg choice – unless it’s ‘eggs benedict’ wit all that creamy sauce. Scrambled eggs are often made with cream to give that creamy texture.
• Order extra vegetables or salad.
• At Asian restaurants, choose stir-fried dishes with extra vegetables.
• Check if curries are made with coconut cream which has lots of artery clogging saturated fat.
• Most sweet and sour dishes use meat or fish which has been pre-fried which adds extra fat.
• If you feel full or don’t love the flavour of something, it’s OK to leave some food on your plate. No-one will growl at you!
• If you are planning on eating dessert, order an entrée with side serve of salad or vegetables rather than a main.
• Best desserts are fresh fruit, sorbet or coffee with biscotti.
• If you need a chocolate fix, order a trim hot chocolate for dessert.
• Follow the 3 S’s rule: choose small serves, share large serves and save some for later.

“Lose 20 kg in 12 weeks.” That was the advice a GP doctor gave one of her patients last week. Is it possible to do this? Yes – but you would have to go on that 4-letter word – a diet! And quite a strict one. The worst thing about ‘going on a diet’ is that you go off it. It’s far better to make small changes that, if you stick with them for a few weeks, turn into new healthy eating habits. Remember the fable of the hare and the tortoise? Slow and steady wins the race!

The ideal rate of weight loss is 0.5 – 1 kg (1.1-2.2 pounds) a week. Any more than that and you will also be losing muscle and water. Standing on the scales doesn’t tell you whether you have lost fat or muscle. That’s why some people actually gain weight when they start increasing exercise. They are building muscle which weighs more than fat. A better way to check whether you are losing fat is to check how tight your clothes feel. In winter my clothes feel as though they have shrunk but when summer arrives, thank goodness they miraculously loosen up again. It’s easier to blame the clothes than the cakes and chocolate!

Too much fat around the tummy increases the risk of all those nasty heath problems – heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Instead of the scales grab a tape measure and check your waist circumference. For good health, women need to keep it under 90 cm (35 inches) and men under 100cm (40 inches).

I am sitting with my son while he practices his writing. The topic is ‘Which would you rather have –  lots of books, lots of games or lots of sweets? He has just written: ‘I would rather have lots of games because sweets can make you fat and all the kids in school would laugh at me.’ Just a few days ago he came home with the latest playground insult: ‘You’re just an overweight old lady’. And on Friday a friend told me how some mothers are paying their teenage daughters $50 for every kilo they lose! Can you pick a common theme here?

Being overweight, especially around the tummy, is not good for health. But the comments above aren’t concerned with health on the inside. We’re bombarded with botox, air brushing and slim, bronzed, wrinkle free celebrities and told this is how to be successful and happy. But do we judge cars and houses like this? Wise people get a building or mechanical inspection before deciding the true worth of a house or car. Shouldn’t we do the same with people, including ourselves?

I’ve just come back from a relaxing weekend at my parent’s home – walking on the beach, basking in the sun at outdoor cafes, talking a lot – and eating soup. My mum, who loves no-fuss cooking, whipped up this simple, healthy soup in 10 minutes for dinner. It’s really low in calories and full of soluble fibre from the lentils – great for weight control, diabetes and high cholesterol.

Barbara Rolls, a professor with the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, looked at the effect of eating soup before a pasta meal. She found that eating vegetable soup (pureed or chunky) before a meal can lower energy intake at the meal by 20%. It makes sense that eating a large volume of a food containing few calories, such as soup or salad, at the start of a meal means you are too full to eat much of the main dinner. All those vegetables are good for weight control and great for a strong immune system. The trick is to eat them before the meal.

1/2 cup red lentils

2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 leek, finely sliced

2 large  carrots, chopped

1 litre chicken stock

Boil together for 10 minutes.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Related:

Soup nutrition by Aussie nutritionist, Catherine Saxelby

My other soup article (recipe)