Continuing to eat healthily on holiday in the States

[PeridotCricket]

Got three weeks in California coming up in March. Hoping to still be on track with eating healthily and losing a bit of weight.

Basically I'm eating way more veg - fish more often than meat and avoiding sweet treats. Don't have a huge sweet tooth - savoury snack are more my downfall.

So any tips for keeping on track in the States?

Are you self-catering? Hotel?

You'll be fine in CA - lots of healthy eaters there. Just watch your portion sizes.

And stay away from the Family Packs of Lays chips

Hotels and travelling round. I think the portion sizes are the thing - I can share with my travelling companion. And also not swilling back the wine 'because I'm on holiday'!

I imagine California is the best place to go in the USA, in terms of healthy eating. Home of the body beautiful, etc. Sounds like you will have a lovely time, I'm rather envious, I always wanted to go to California.

California? It'll be fine ! If you go to Los Angeles you'll be spoilt for choice

Salad with dressing on the side / no dressing is an LA institution

Also chewing food and spitting out (remember sex and the city in LA?!)

Yeah, as PP have said, you'll be fine in California, its very health conscious. I do find the USA is actually not too bad if you order with care, they are unduly very accommodating with leaving things out, so no cheese, without butter, dressing on the side etc.

We were in LA for Xmas/ny period, our second trip. I didn't really find portion sizes an issue at independent restaurants but the chains such as Cheesecake Factory were enormous. Even the salad was like a trough.

But it's easy to avoid the chains when there are countless independent restaurants and food trucks everywhere with amazing fresh options. We found the Asian and south East Asian in particular, were good potion sizes and plenty of healthy options. And willing to adapt if you request. Bear in mind that as they essential work for tips so they really want to make you happy.

Interestingly, as a family with four vegans and two omnivores we found often vegan options quite difficult to come by and had to do a lot of adapting menu items to suit us. One greeter at an Italian even saying 'vegan is hard' Err no it's not... Obviously the vegan restaurants were amazing.

Watch the bread on the table. Also as a vegan aside, just about all the bread there has an egg wash.

Oh, and they're more than happy to load you up with plenty of water at every place you go to so you can always fill up on that.

I live in the USA. It’s not so difficult as people think.

California is pretty health conscious if you are in a city rather than a theme park.

US restaurants are really good at allowing you to adjust menu items. So it’s perfectly ok to ask for a appetiser for your entree (main course) They won’t bat an eyelid if you ask for the dressing on the side, or to have it without cheese, or grilled instead of fried.

You can also swap out fries or potatoes for an additional vegetable side.

Be careful about refillable drinks if you like “real” coke and ask for them to remove the bread basket

Avoid fast food but even then most fast food places have salad options.

Where I live in Texas there are lots of restaurants where you can choose exactly what goes on your pizza. Salad or sub which lets to you complete control.

Stay away from gorgeous cookies and baking. And assume that desserts will always be split between several people!

I felt outfaced by the portion sizes a couple of years ago. So much do that I thought even if I just asked for a ham sandwich it would be th3 size of my heAd. When I really just wanted two bits of bread, a couple of slices of ham and maybe some lettuce And tomato!

Asian restaurants is a great tip thank you.

And yes we went to the Cheesecake Factory and dh ordered the light salad and managed about a quarter!

Avoid buffets and unlimited drink refills and ask for everything on the side - i.e. toast unbuttered, dressings / sauces etc.

Lots of places, especially for lunch, will do half orders of salad or sandwich or similar.

If you want a normal sandwich and not half a pound of wet deli meat between two slices of bread, Pret a manger is the same as it is in the UK and normal sizes - used to be my go to for a US office lunch!

It hadn’t occurred to me to order half portions. We’d just been sharing a main...but you don’t always want the same th8ng. Genius.

I live in the US Midwest and you can still eat healthily in most places.

You can pretty much switch up any order and they are totally fine with it- e.g. sub fries for salad, veg or a portion of fruit.

We choose to avoid Cheesecake Factory etc and eat at local places, and most of those have healthy food and reasonable portion sizes. Microbreweries are really good options for this, but you'll have way more variety in California!

Eater do really good lists of restaurants to visit in major cities- you can look at some menus ahead of time: la.eater.com/