Hello my friends and welcome back to the Healthy Eating for Busy Women podcast. If you’re new here, my name is Kat and if you have been enjoying the podcast, make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button so you never […0.5s] miss an episode that helps healthy eating feel […0.5s] more doable, relaxed and natural. That is what I specialize in, and it is what I am here to help you accomplish. Also, if you are looking for the best next step to master naturally healthy eating with me, you can sign up for my free mini course at catrentice com forward slash course. So this is a step by step process to introduce you to my work, and you will begin making significant changes with your eating habits right away. So make sure you go sign up for that at catrentice com forward slash course.So today I am excited to talk about how to eat healthy at restaurants. Eating out or going out to eat is something I have coached on for many years now. And I am really happy to dedicate an entire episode to this so you can reference it when you need support. And my goal for all of you is to be able to go to a restaurant with friends, family, loved ones whoever, and fully enjoy that experience for what it is, and achieve your health goals. So you can go in there and order off a menu without spiraling, stressing, ruminating, without overthinking what you’re gonna order. Because what I want to get you to today is that you can enjoy eating out and still honor what your body needs to […0.5s] lose weight, feel healthy, whatever your goal is.So that is what I want to pitch to you today. Now the big problem we run into, especially as ambitious women or high achieving women is eating out will feel like a high stress situation when we’re trying to be healthy. Because it comes up against a lot of how we see is necessary to solve this problem. So we see healthy eating as following a plan, hitting a calorie limit, tracking our macros a certain way, which none of these things are wrong for those of you who are new to my work. I do not promote, […0.5s] anti […0.5s] tools, anti planning, anti diet tendencies here, really. Because I personally don’t coach that way. I don’t think it’s a good use of your energy. I want you to see that any tools with weight loss or healthy eating are actually neutral. We just want to develop healthy eating habits in a way that are long lasting and efficient.So that’s what I want to touch on here before we get into it is that it’s not the planning and the tracking that might be wrong for you. It’s the fact that you think that’s the only way to hit your weight loss goal.So for those of us who are Type a and have used these tools eating out at restaurants and eating out in general might feel pressuring because we think, I have to fit this restaurant, my eating decisions into this calorie macro tracking box that I think is necessary.So here’s then what ends up happening will maybe obsess […0.5s] over the menu ahead of time and have to know exactly what we’re gonna eat before and how we’ll fit it in. We think we need to choose the cleanest or lowest calorie option, knowing it’s not gonna satisfy you, or maybe you end up throwing in the towel completely and say, screw it. And you just eat past your fullness because you’ve already messed up by going to the restaurant in the first place, right?What’s happening here if you relate to this, it’s not a food problem. Okay, so it’s actually not an issue with […0.5s] the food itself or nutrition or anything like that.It’s a lack of stability and trust in yourself as an eater. So you are relying on rigid control with food in the form of protocols in rules instead of flexible decision making, which ends up creating stress, guilt and ultimately inconsistency with healthy eating.So the solution to all of this is to realize […0.5s] your goal doesn’t need to be eating perfectly healthy at restaurants.Alright, the steaks are not that high, they will feel that high to lose weight and be healthy. If success is determined by following a plan, a calorie counts or macros, whatever your goal is. But to be a naturally healthy eater, you need to also develop the scale of resourcefully healthy eating without perfection. Because if at restaurants, you can manage to stay connected to what your body needs, your values, your goals, your food preferences, no matter what’s on the menu. This will inform the best possible decision, no matter what the food options are.So I am here to help you not be really good at […0.5s] following a plan perfectly, cause you never will […0.6s] for the rest of your life.I am here to help you create long term healthy eating and weight loss results by being resourceful. And this is a big point of focus when it comes to eating healthy in any setting, but especially restaurants.So as a naturally healthy eater, I want you to imagine having this identity where you don’t have to work hard and perfect […0.5s] to eat healthy, and have the weight you, […0.5s] and have the body you wanna have.As that person, you will need to begin 1. Making confident decisions with food from internal knowing. So not panic or pressure to get it right, where you’re following someone else’s, knowing more than your own.You need to become confident about decisions you make with food from self parenting versus proving you can perform perfectly. So many of us, if we identify as Type a or ambitious, have an image of ourselves where we can really show up and do the thing, work hard and perform.But I want you guys to see how that is not the same thing as having a high regard for yourself as a parent of yourself, as your own caregiver.I want you to notice the, for lack of better words here, mature energy you feel when you acknowledge that you are the one who ultimately makes your decisions with food. And you’re just gonna start making choices based on what you think is best. It doesn’t matter if you follow through with the choices perfectly or not, but this is what naturally healthy eaters do. They don’t wonder what’s the healthiest food option on the menu or what the right thing to do is. They’re going to that menu and saying based on my goals, my preferences and my needs, what do I think is the best decision I can make here? And then they make that decision from their own knowing.Also as a naturally healthy eater at restaurants, you will need to begin allowing pleasure […0.5s] and satisfaction with foods you love without over eating them. So you will need to stop associating enjoying your meal with eating more or over consuming the foods you find pleasurable.So this is a skill, it’s probably one of the biggest skills I teach in my membership, is how to lower your urges to over eat. And this comes from stress regulation, emotional awareness.There are tools for this, but I want you to even see, now are you associating […0.6s] eating foods when you go out that you find yummy and having pleasure with them as over consuming them? Cause those things are separate.And the No. 3, I want you as a naturally healthy eater to reframe restaurant meals […0.5s] as neutral. So in other words, I want you to stop equating going to a restaurant as a moral test of how good or bad you’re being with food.It’s not a test, no one is measuring your performance except for your own judgments. So stop using eating out as at restaurants as a test to measure yourself, value your worth, your performance.That’s not what the purpose of that outing is. All it is, is decisions to be made, and you do not have to make the perfect decisions. And it’s gonna get easier to resourcefully make decisions when you’re not adding the pressure to prove something about yourself at that restaurant or wherever it is you’re going, right.Separate the decisions you wanna make with food from the self worth goals that your brain is offering you with healthy eating. And this is something I coach on a lot. So if you would like support with this, that is very normal, and my membership will help you do that too.So make sure you join that community if you’re looking for coaching support with this. You can go to cat rentals. Com forward slash membership and that’s where you can sign up.So […0.5s] let’s walk through a process you can start doing to make restaurant outings feel more stable and aligned with your healthy eating goals. So there’s four questions I want you to ask yourself when you go out to eat.So you guys, you can do this beforehand or you can do the steering. I want you to get to a place where you can answer these four questions when you look at a menu fresh. I don’t want you to spend a lot of time teaching your brain that you have to over prepare and overthink for these moments.I’d much rather you come to the understanding that you can just practice asking these questions when you have the menu in front of you. So the first question to ask yourself at the restaurant has to do with your persona. So I want you to ask yourself, who am I gonna show up as […0.6s] during this meal, […0.5s] how will I see myself?Am I gonna see myself as someone who really struggles and has to get it together with food? Or am I gonna see myself as someone who is resourceful, who always knows the best next step to take and who’s really resourceful with making decisions with food, right?I want you to practice holding yourself in a high regard, no matter where you’re at with food or you’re eating habits. I don’t care if you’re stress eating everyday, emotionally eating.I have been there, so many of us have been there. It’s okay. It has nothing to do with your self worth or how capable you are. It’s just a path, and you’re at a certain point in the path, you get to hold yourself in high adult resourceful regard, no matter where you’re at in your journey.So choose what persona you’re gonna have at that meal, who am I gonna decide to show up as during this outing. I recommend deciding to show up as someone who is going to resourcefully make the best decisions she can and to learn from them. That’s it.So 2, I want you to identify your preferences, so I want you to ask yourself the question from that menu, what’s gonna taste good to me? What will I actually like?Simple question, we have taste buds for a reason. Pleasure is a meter to be filled with food. It’s important to prioritize what tastes good. Remember pleasure with food is not over indulging in it. It’s not an amount, it’s about the experience. So now let’s look at that menu and ask, what’s gonna taste good to me? Let yourself answer that question and notice you guys.I’m put it, I’m putting this as one of the first questions, cause it’s gonna help narrow down the decisions. So what tastes good to me? Identify those things.Then third, I want you to check in with your body, and what you know about food and your body, and how […0.5s] your body feels after a meal. I want you to ask yourself what’s gonna feel good for my body.So if you feel like you don’t have all the answers yet, that just means you need to get to know yourself as an eater.So this is something I cover in my process too. I want you guys to get really skilled at knowing your preferences when it comes to your taste satisfaction, all the stuff. But this is a really good way to start doing that. Ask yourself what will feel good in my body […0.5s] based on what you see on the menu.So for example for me, when food is really high in sodium or sugar, I know that I’m gonna feel a little sick afterwards. That’s just my body, a lot of dairy will do that for me too. So that’s something I’m very familiar with, and so that would inform that answer for me.What about you? What will feel good in your body and what will feel kind of sluggish afterwards?And then the last question I want you to think about your goals. Maybe that’s with weight loss, how you want to feel in your body healthier, […0.6s] the food decisions you wanna be making for your health, whatever it is, […0.6s] how will answer the question, how will I eat this meal to honor the goals I have?What will that look like? Maybe that means we’re enjoying the foods we love, but not over eating them. Maybe that means we allow ourselves to order dessert, but we take a couple of bites. Maybe that means we take half of our meal home because we know we do not need that much food.It can be anything, but y’all, the purpose, I know you type A’s are gonna try and hustle this a little bit, cause you are me, and I am you.The purpose of answering these questions isn’t to get the answers right. The purpose is just asking them to see what answers come up. The point of this is to be someone who asks the questions when you’re looking at that menu.The point is not to know the right answer to solve this problem. That is where so many of us type AERs get stuck with things like healthy eating and skills is we don’t see that the value isn’t in there being one right answer. The value is in you becoming someone who asks yourself these questions as your own caregiver.So know that the stakes are really low for what answers you come up with. Here. The goal is for you to start being a woman who asks these types of questions when you go out to eat without pressuring yourself to perform or plan or ruminate about it ahead of time.So just to know that, now quick tips I have for you. I have 5 just rapid fire tips here that you can take with you […0.6s] when navigating eating out at restaurants.The first one again is to not over plan. I’d rather you just be present. I want you to engage with your eating experience. Do not treat this like a performance and know that looking at a menu in advance can be helpful. Totally there’s nothing wrong with that. But if it causes you anxiety, and it triggers that pressure, skip it. I want you to train yourself to know that you can make healthy eating decisions resourcefully in any moment. You don’t need more time, you don’t need more thinking, decision making, problem solving, none of it. Trust that you can scan a menu and choose something that aligns with what you wanna do right now. And if you don’t have the perfect answer, better to build those answers in experience by making decisions during the meal without hustle than over planning your decisions, and then burning yourself out. See what I’m saying? It’s working smarter, not harder.Second tip I have is to order for nourishment and pleasure. So choose something that gives your body what it needs to feel good, and something that satisfies your taste buds.Pleasure is a meter to be filled with food. We wanna prioritize it. Maybe it’s a hearty salad with a side of fries, right, just naming random things here, or a sandwich that you really love, but you eat it halfway, and you stop when you’re done.What matters most is that it’s a deliberate choice during this meal. It’s not an emotional or compulsive one, or a decision you’re just throwing away. Cause you’re already […0.6s] making yourself believe you failed. Just deliberately make decisions.No. 3, I want you to norm, No 3, I want you to normalize pausing while eating a meal. This is more just a tip you can start incorporating, especially as you’re learning these skills about halfway through the meal.Just take a pause, just take a little intermission and ask, where’s my hunger level at? Am I still even enjoying this? Do I feel like I’ve had enough? Just check in again, don’t have to come up with the perfect answers, just become someone who checks in in the middle of a meal.This is something that in my humble opinion, us as humans should be doing with food. It’s just we’re not taught this from a young age. I know I wasn’t, so practice it.This pause is how you check in with your body and […0.6s] give it what it needs based on what it tells you, rather than regretting how much you weigh afterwards.And then lastly, as best as you can release that perfectionism over time, stop indulging in it, stop obsessing, stop ruminating, stop over planning. If you end up over eating after a meal, it’s okay.That’s not the point to solve how you eat right away. It’s to become someone who actually takes responsibility for the decisions and makes them deliberately in your body with your decision making. Your work isn’t to get food right, right away. It’s not to get healthy eating right.It’s to make firm decisions and then notice what happened with compassion and awareness. So you keep showing up. The more you normalize your humanness and imperfect meal, the less power those moments will have over you.And then guess what? We get to learn from them, and then keep showing up with resourcefulness and try again.So many of y’all, so many of us, […0.5s] we’re not creating the results we want, not because we’re failing and we’re not doing it right, but it’s because we’re unwilling to fail and we’re unwilling to participate in our own experimentation and human error.So just know that you get to fail and participate in that trial and error towards your goals.So […0.5s] all in all, here’s what I want you to know today. I want you to know that restaurants are not the enemy of your health goals. I do not care what they are, my friends. They’re just another place where you get to practice resourcefulness with healthy eating.It’s an opportunity not just to enjoy, but to teach yourself that you do not need to restrict to have the goals you want. And it is your job as your own parent to resourcefully figure out how that’s true. Every time you sit down at a menu, […0.6s] you don’t need to get it perfect when you go out to eat, you just need to start making some decisions on purpose.So if this resonates with you, and you’re ready to have healthy eating, feel a bit easier again, I recommend you start with my free mini course. That’s at cat rentas com forward slash course.[…0.5s] This is the perfect place to start. It’s where I recommend everyone start. And I’m so glad you were able to be here with me today. I love you and I will talk to you next week.