Your Friends Are Making You Fat

 

It’s Friday night, and you’re supposed to be grabbing dinner with your friends at that new pizza place. You know the one that’s supposed to be so cool you’d think you were in Brooklyn but the pizza is so authentic you’d think you were in Italy. Which makes you wonder – is there New York style pizza in Italy? Probably not, Italians are pizza snobs.

And then you remember – aren’t you supposed to be trying to lose weight? You already have three weddings and a long weekend at the beach on the schedule. Should you really be going out for another carb heavy dinner? You’re just going to spend half the night thinking “How many hours will I have to go to the gym to work off all these calories?” or “How little will I have to eat for the rest of the week to make up for all the damage I’m doing tonight?” But what else can you do? Skip out on dinner with your friends? It’s like no matter what you do you can’t win.

Whenever you go out to eat there’s always some cool new dish to try, like three layer pizza cake. Ok maybe not that, but other cool things. Or your friend just got a new job and orders a round of shots to celebrate; you can’t say no to that, can you? Pizza, ramen, dumplings and who wants to skip out on doughnuts? Not me, not you.

So how do you enjoy going out to eat with your friends and still lose weight when your friends want to try every cool new Korean BBQ place that opens up. The requirement to be a cool new place seems to be to have two options on the menu – dishes that will make you fat and dishes that will make you really fat. Is the restaurant industry plotting against you? Probably. Does it seem like they don’t want you to lose weight? They don’t; it’s not good for business.

You’re not going to stop hanging out with your friends. Your friends like going out to eat. You like going out to eat. And you’re definitely not skipping out on boozy brunch. You don’t have to. This is what you’re going to do instead – pick the right foods at the right time.

Let’s say you’re going out for pizza. This is what you order:

Alcohol

• Start the night with the least sweet options.
• Bone Dry wines are your best option because they have less sugar.
• Red Wine – cabernet, pinot noir, syrah.
• White Wine – sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, chardonnay.

Appetizers

• Order one appetizer per person. Most people order fewer appetizers because they think they won’t have room to eat the main but that’s actually good at a pizza place because the main is higher in carbs than the appetizers you’re going to pick.
• Cold – olives, salumi, and cheeses.
• Salads – salads with vegetables over fruit as fruits as a group have more sugar than vegetables.
• Hot – brussel sprouts, meatballs, and artichokes.

Pizza

Pick a pizza with at least 3 toppings – 1 cheese, 1 vegetable and 1 meat. The more toppings you put on your pizza, the more full you will be from each slice of pizza. The goal is to end up eating fewer pizza slices total so fewer carbs total.

Dessert

Any and all – the goal is to be so full from Appetizers and Pizza that you only have room for a few bites.

 

I know what you’re thinking, who wants to be that really lame friend that says no to ordering garlic knots? I don’t want you to be that really lame friend. This is what you do instead:

Use The Judge Judy Script:

To be used to stop your friends from judging you for trying to get hotter.

Friend (the one that seems to eat half their weight in food every time you go out but still has a better body than you do): “Let’s order the garlic knots, the Yelp reviews say they’re supposed to be really good here.”

You: “Work was really busy, I just ate lunch an hour ago. Let’s order the [insert complicated name of artisanal salad of your choice] instead.”

Try this out the next time you’re out with friends and let me know what works and what doesn’t in the comments below.

Bagels, breweries, burgers – your friends are making you fat.

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