Eating out? Come on try it!

If you like to eat out but you want to keep climbing the steps towards wellness, check out these restaurants. 

~~ Breakfast ~~

Einstein Bros. offers healthier alternatives like reduced-fat shmears (NYC Deli slang for: the act coating a bagel with a small amount of cream cheese.), hummus, and peanut butter—a great way to add healthy fat to breakfast (or lunch). It also serves a Good Grains bagel that has an impressive 4 grams of fiber. Just beware of over stuffing you sandwich then it will be high calorie.

Let’s keep climbing the steps toward wellness together

If you’re in the area of Atlanta bread, the low-fat pumpkin muffin top has only 200 calories, compared with 320 to 640 calories for regular-size muffins. That’s a treat. And if you’re there during lunch or dinner try the entrée salads like Salsa Fresca Salmon Salad: grilled wild Alaskan salmon filet on greens with fire-roasted black bean and corn salsa and a pineapple-mango vinaigrette. Now that’s wellness at it’s finest!

And speaking of lunch or dinner

~~ Lunch ~~

At Wendy’s you can get an Apple Pecan Chicken Salad Half-Size with just 170 calories and 6 grams of total fat.  That’s under their Garden Sensation’s menu.  The Sour Cream & Chives Baked Potato is not a bad deal for 320 calories and just 3.5 grams of fat.

Jason’s deli is good for you to eat occasionally because you are able to build any sandwich on a whole-wheat wrap.  My complaint is it’s always too loud in the restaurant.  Loud restaurants are a hard atmosphere to digest your food properly.  They do provide the nutritional value of their menu items so Go Jason’s!

~~ Dinner ~~

My wife and I like to eat at Chili’s and it’s no wonder why.  They have a bad habit of serving high calorie and high fat foods that taste so good.  But I can recommend this…the Grilled Chicken Sandwich w/ Steamed Broccoli 610 calories with 13 grams of fat so if you’ve been good all day …treat your self with this at Chili’s

Panera bread dishes out a squeezable organic yogurt, (can you tell I’m into yogurt) and PB & J (with all natural peanut butter), and grilled organic cheese on white whole –grain bread.  Yumm-o as Rachel Ray would say.

Buffet-style Chipotle gives every customer complete control over her burrito, taco, or salad. (Take that, Taco Bell!) And you get to build it with fresh, local ingredients.  I suggest the burrito Bowls, which lets you skip the tortillas and all those extra carbs.

Did you know that McDonalds serves a mean yogurt and granola parfait?  They don’t serve much in the way of health food, but I will have to out that on my list

You remember not too long ago I talked about McDonald’s and the happy Meal, which you can order with a side of apple dippers (with low-fat caramel) instead of fries and low-fat milk or fruit juice instead of soda. (Now the trick is just getting your kid to go for them!) 

Might I suggest the 260- to 270-calorie Snack Wraps (choose grilled chicken) for protein without a lot of unwanted carbohydrates?

What do you eat when you want to eat out but you want to be “good”?

Wellness Matters for Life

Life Coach Doug