Day 20

Lately I've been noticing what may be a sign of the economy turning around.  Namely a lot of new restaurants are opening in the downtown Providence area.  A new place called Roi opened a month or two ago, and today some friends from work went there at lunch.  Nice place, though kind of funny as it was a bar/concert venue in the past which I've been to once or twice. 

We went a couple weeks ago, but it had been Lent so I was trying to be good and avoid eating meat.  Even so, their burgers looked tasty and I was craving them.  This week we went back and I got a burger.  Relatively conventional burger, though very tasty.  What was kind of neat was that their standard cheeseburger comes with Mozzarella instead of American or Cheddar cheese.  Made an interesting change from the usual burger.

Most of the restaurants downtown are a couple blocks away, and the ones that are closer than that tend to be sit-down only.  Sometime next month though a new pizza place is opening right across the street.  Not sure what coal-fired pizza is, but it could be a whole new challenge.

Food today:  egg and cheese sandwich (300 calories), burger and fries at Roi (1200 calories), and dinner was another egg and cheese (300 calories).  No exercise today, but hopefully I'm all healed up for tomorrow.

Today's Results:
Daily Food Total:  1800
Exercise:  0
Points Earned:  1200
Total Points Earned:  25985
Points to go:  174015

Day 6

Going out to eat with people without going off the diet.  Not difficult necessarily but not exactly easy either.  At lunch today I went to Subway with friends, which ran the risk of eating way too much (if I got the meatball sub I'd usually get), even more so since I'd already eaten the lunch I brought with me.  Luckily, nobody thought it was weird that I just hung out.

I think the real tactic for going out is to generally know what you're ordering and trying to pick a dish with a fairly controlled amount of calories.  At most restaurants the salads are as unhealthy (or occasionally more unhealthy) than any of the other dishes on the menu, so it's not as simple as that. 

Eat what will be satisfying rather than what looks to be the "healthy" choice, just try and maintain the portion control.  At a place like Subway, go with the 6 inch rather than 12 inch.  At a Red Robin or equivalent, get a simple burger rather than crazy toppings.  At 5 guys don't get the large fries.  Looking at the nutritional information they post shows that the average meal is still going to be too big, but it'll be 1300 calories rather than 2000.

I'm sure there's other choices (don't eat the bread, ignore the fries, get the cup of soup or the side salad), but for me I think there's not much point to going out someplace if you're not really going to enjoy what you eat.

Cheerios for breakfast (300 again), Turkey sandwich for lunch (500), Salmon, noodles and green beans for dinner (900), plus about 100 calories worth of snack.

Today's Results:
Daily Food Total:  1800 calories
Exercise:  0
Points Earned:  1200
Total Points Earned:  8200
Points to go:  191800