Wedding Banquets and Social Gatherings: Opt for Steamed or Boiled Dishes
Wedding banquets pose a significant challenge for those managing their weight. They often feature rich, heavy dishes, making it easy to overeat and feel overly full. Meals can last two to three hours, with conversations distracting diners from tracking calorie intake.
How do experts handle it?
Nutritionists also attend banquets. For private banquets, her secret is to request takeout after the third course, turning it into the next day's lunch. Especially with meats like steak or chicken—stir-fry them with vegetables the next day. Abalone can be wrapped up to cook into congee, conveniently solving the next day's meal.
For communal dining, follow these principles:
1. Slow down your eating pace to allow satiety signals time to reach your brain, prompting you to stop eating.
2. Control the variety and portion sizes of dishes you take. Steamed or boiled items like fish or shrimp are safe to eat freely. For dishes like Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, choose ingredients like mushrooms, bamboo shoots, or quail eggs, but limit fried or pan-seared items to just one or two pieces. Also, limit soup portions to about half a bowl.
At afternoon tea, avoid puff pastry and filled desserts.When female friends gather, afternoon tea is almost inevitable. It's easy to end up eating more than intended, especially since cakes, desserts, and drinks are major no-nos for those watching their weight. But just watching others eat can be even more frustrating.
How do experts handle it?
When having afternoon tea, order a chiffon cake or sponge cake paired with a cup of black coffee for a low-calorie option.Remember: avoid breads or cakes with fillings, toppings, or puff pastry, as they're high in calories and carry trans fat risks.Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese... How should you order healthily at different cuisines?
What do experts eat?
Regardless of the restaurant type, ordering more vegetables and clear soups is always a good choice. You can also ask the server to bring the soup first. Chinese cuisine offers many cooking methods; prioritize steamed, boiled, clear-broth stewed, roasted, cold-tossed, or braised options.
Vietnamese restaurants offer many cold vegetable dishes or steamed rice noodles, which are excellent choices. A key advantage of Vietnamese cuisine is the use of lettuce wraps for meat. By reducing the amount of grilled meat and increasing the lettuce portion, you can transform it into a healthier dish.
Sashimi and oysters in Japanese cuisine are quite low in calories. However, raw fish contains thiaminase, an enzyme that breaks down vitamin B1. Consuming too much can lead to vitamin B1 deficiency, so frequent sashimi eaters should consider supplementing with B vitamins.