While running errands yesterday it got to be pretty late and I was faced with my first restaurant challenge of keeping my meal under 500 calories. I'm proud to say that it was a successful day at Chin's Asia Fresh.
And while I realized how many calories are in rice I still had sticker shock about it. The rice in the dishes alone was 427.5 (2.5 servings of 171 calories), then on average the chicken and sauce on top of that was about 200-250 calories depending on what choices were made so I decided to go another route.
What Did I Have?
For my meal I chose the following dishes that totaled less than 496 calories (since I had the dressing on the side and used hardly any of it).
 |
| Chin's Thai Basil Salad with Dressing on the Side (321 calories and $3.75) |
 | |||||||||
| Chin's Fresh Spring Shrimp Roll (175 calories for 2 and $4.95) |
After doing this exercise I realized that Americans are IN A RUSH, which is part of our problem. We are in a rush in the parking lot, we are in a rush to order and we are in a rush to eat...before we take time to actually think about what we are putting into our bodies.
Another part of our problem is that we don't want to inconvenience anyone or be SEEN AS WEIRD. So instead of asking questions to the server about what is in our food, asking for a nutrition list (which almost all fast food or chain restaurants have), asking for condiments on the side or researching the menu with your smart phone before ordering...we make quick and dumb decisions instead because we don't want to be seen as being "picky", "strange" or inconvenience anyone.
I might have been the person in the entry way searching through Chin's online nutrition menu on my phone that didn't order for 5 minutes but guess what? I felt great about what I was ordering AND I felt confident about what I had eaten after the fact and about the decisions that I made.
In short, MAKE time to research and make good decisions.
No comments:
Post a Comment