Low carb eating out?

[silvetstar]

What food do you eat when your out? Lunch or dinners? I'm totally clueless as what is a good choice out. X

Are you clueless when it comes to eating at home?! I doubt it - so use that knowledge for when you're going out.

Anything in a sauce can be dubious, so be careful - if it's a creamy or cheesey sauce, it's likely to be thickened with flour. If you're at a Chinese/Thai place, sauces are likely to be quite sweet.

Avoid the obvious things, like pasta/rice but also potatoes, parsnips and sweetcorn.

If you're unsure, go for straightforward meat/fish, with sides of lower carb vegetables.

I've never yet been to a restaurant where they've refused to replace something - so if a dish comes with potatoes or fries/chips (like steak, for example), then I'll ask for a salad instead.

Was there any particular restaurant or restaurant type you were considering?

I'm more on about quick lunches as in grab a sandwich and a coffee or juice not restaurants but I can lo longer have sandwiches so not sure what to have.

No longer have

Salad or soup. Most lunch places/cafes have these on offer.

Ah yes. That's really difficult. Low carbing isn't catered for, generally, in most high street/coffee shops/quick lunch-type places!

You can get a reasonable amount of low carb stuff in M&S these days - individual portions of cheese, packs of pork crackling/strips - but mostly the food you'll have to go for is stuff you need to eat with cutlery.

Where do you live? If in London or a decent sized town/city:

• M&S: as BIWI said, loads of options there. It's one of the better supermarkets. Also Waitrose.
• Sainsbury's: not great. You have to put random bits together e.g. get packet chicken and a pot of guac + a salad bag.
• Pret: lower carb soups, salads without the carbs (e.g. the crayfish salad)
• Wasabi: pretty crap as most stuff has wheat gluten in the sauce but the pork is ok-ish, without rice obviously
• Leon: Most of the dishes can be had without rice and just come with a cabbage salad
• Chipotle and 99% of the burrito chains will do it as a salad (ask for it without beans or rice not just without the wrap) and will give you extra guac/salad cream/cheese for a price
• Byron is great, their buffalo chicken wings come in small or large and you can go for the blue cheese sauce or, if you're being super strict, they'll do aoli for no extra cost, in it's place

My recommendation is to stock up on mini packets of mayo where you find them, so any boxed salad with protein can easily be fattened up. But yeah, it's not great out there. I lived on chicken wings for lunch for months...

Round me (not London) I treat myself to a skinny flat white or cappuccino, and look for a meat option I.e scotch egg, somewhere a bit lower class where they do all day fry ups is good! Evening time I stick to salads (ceaser and prawn mostly), steaks, and whenever I’m with someone who has dessert I have coffee and don’t feel left out! I did Wagamama the other day and had prawn lollipop to start, and steak salad for main. Yum.

Lots of carbs in a flat white or cappuccino, though!

Better than a slice of cake!

I live in the country and all there is is sandwich shops and coffee shops.

Sadly, then, you'll have to prepare your own packed lunch

You could always ask your local coffee/sandwich shops if they would consider widening their range by adding in some low carb options?

I didn't realise flat white and cappuccinos were so bad :(

I kind of think that I"m mostly trying to reduce carbs a lot more than I normally do, but on the rare occasions I go out, that I could not worry so much for that meal.

But cappuccino or flat white are different - I drink one every day! I don't like filter coffee/espresso and have always just savoured that as my treat now that I'm not really having chocolate or biscuits or cakes. Tea just doesn't do it for me. I knew I shouldn't have hot chocolate. But cappuccino? :( Crumbs.

It's hard to find low-carb in any of that sort of shops, I know. Pret does a chicken and avocado salad that I think is OK. Some places do some little nut bags. For a treat, I like Pret dark chocolate and sea salt bar, as I can even eat just half of it sometimes. I know it's still not really low-carb, but compared to what I used to eat, it is!

Starbucks has two new treats, an apple bar and a dark chocolate hazelnut bar, which are about the lowest carbs of all the bakery goodies. Not low carb by any means, but better than most of the rest, so if you're going to have a bakery thing, might be worth a try.

I find it frustrating that I can't ever have the nice stuff that I like, feels like having even one meal now and then is going to sabotage the whole effort. So I find myself cutting out going to that kind of shop, coffee shop ,lunch place etc, which is bad socially. And mentally! Wish there were more options. Or that a 'bad day' wasn't so bad on this kind of diet. At least on WW or that sort of low-calorie diet, a meal off didn't just ruin all your good work!

I treat myself to a skinny flat white or cappuccino

Opting for skinny makes it higher carb!