Team Beachbody Coach and featured contributor Marvin Manzano talks about how to eat healthy while eating out.  This is some excellent advice.  One of Tony Horton’s rules to live by is “ASK FOR WHAT YOU NEED”.  Don’t worry about making special orders.  The restaurant exists to serve your needs, so let them do that.  I think you’ll find they are more than happy to accomodate you.  For more info on Marvin check out his blog: http://lafitclub.blogspot.com/

Eating Fit & Tasty Food in a Mexican Restaurant

My wife and I went to a local Mexican Restaurant a few weeks ago and the menu just happen to have how many calories each plate had + Sodium.
Geez! Almost every plate had 1000 cal and 1000 mil-grams of Sodium!! – High blood Pressure anybody?
If i eat one of those plates, there’s goes 1/2 of my Cal intake for the day! Talk about cheating! I’ll have to eat peanuts and water for the rest of the day. No way. So there has to be a way to enjoy your self when you dine out at a Mexican Restaurant.

Here are a few tips on how to do it:

Fajitas
Fajitas generally provide you with grilled meat and vegetables with an assortment of condiments and flour tortillas. This can be a very fit and tasty combination, if the meat and vegetables are not grilled in tons of butter, oil, sugar or salt. Simply request the meal grilled with little or no oil, sugar or salt. And you may add your flavor with the salsa, cheese and guacamole. Limit or skip the full-fat sour cream, to cut fat and calories.

Request extra vegetables instead of rice or lettuce wraps instead of flour tortillas
White rice and flour tortillas turn into sugar in your body and have very little nutritional value. If you are fortunate enough to find a Mexican restaurant that offers brown rice and whole wheat tortilla options, then you may request that. This will increase fiber and overall nutritional value of your meal.

The best option is to substitute extra vegetables for white rice. Extra vegetables increase the fiber content (making you feel full,) drastically decrease the calorie count (1 cup of rice=170 calories; 1 cup vegetables=20-50 calories) and will increase the overall nutritional value of the meal. Plus you can dip the vegetables into the sauce you have on the side. Using lettuce leaves to wrap your fajitas saves tons of calories (1 small flour tortilla=80-110 calories; 1 lettuce leaf=1-2 calories.)

Request grilled chicken or fish (cooked with little or no oil, sugar or salt) and with the sauce on the side
This is one of the healthiest ways to enjoy restaurant meals. Most sauces are varying combinations of fat, sugar or salt. This may create a truly tasty meal, but comes at a high cost to your caloric budget, waistline and possibly health. Simply requesting all sauce on the side allows you to enjoy all of the flavor, without soaking your meat and vegetables in extra fat, salt and/or sugar. Most restaurants will be happy to fulfill this request. Try it next time, and I promise it will open your eyes to a new world of nutritious and delicious restaurant food.

Request half of the entree served and half packaged to-go immediately
The typical restaurant meal is 2 or more servings. But even if you only intend to eat half of the food on your plate, allowing it to linger in front of you can lead to additional bites and the possibility of a clean plate. Plus there is the tendency to feel compelled to finish the plate after you have eaten more than half of the portion. If you are at home, immediately place 1 serving onto your plate and put the rest into the refrigerator – then you will have to re-heat the dish to eat it.

Limit – Notice: i Said Limit

• Chips and cheese dip: If you must have chips, use salsa. Turn down all chip bowl refills.
• Deep-fried foods: Chimichangas, fried crispy corn taco shells, etc. are dishes you should stay away from!
• Full-fat sour cream or cheese: Limit yourself to one or the other to save calories and fat.
• Guacamole: This is a healthy food, full of good fats, but it’s also high in calories, so be careful.
• Margaritas, Daiquiris and Sangria: Sugar + Alcohol = Empty Calories. Substitute a light beer, to cut sugar and calories