Eating out without wrecking your week

Any plan that assumes you will never eat out is a plan that ends on a Friday. The goal is not avoidance. It is making the one meal cost you one meal.

Decide before you arrive

The single highest-leverage habit: look at the menu on the way there, not at the table. Decisions made hungry, socially, with a drink in hand, are not really decisions.

Anchor the protein first

Pick the protein, then build around it. Tandoori anything, grilled anything, a dal that is actually thick. The carbohydrate will find you regardless — it does not need your help.

• Order the protein and one shared carbohydrate, not one each
• Ask for the gravy on the side; most of the oil lives there
• Drink water between drinks, not because it is virtuous but because it slows the meal down

Do not compensate the next day

The damage from one big meal is small. The damage from skipping breakfast, training fasted and eating 900 calories the next day is not — that is the pattern that turns one dinner into a lost week.

Go back to your normal meal, at your normal time, the very next morning. If lunch arrives weighed and labelled regardless of what you did last night, that gets a lot easier.