Dining in restaurants are convenient and pleasurable. However, dining out can be a burden on your wallet and waistline. You certainly need to be careful what to order in a restaurant. They need not be too costly and fattening. Here are some great restaurant dining tips.

Restaurant Meals Are Often Sodium And Preservative-Laden Foods
Restaurants and fast food outlets often use lots of preservatives, sodium-filled sauces and flavor enhancers. They make the food taste much much better. The bad thing is, they add more bad cholesterol to the body.

A Healthy Restaurant Dining Experience
Some nutrition experts say that you are consuming so much calories in the first and last 10 minutes of your dining in a restaurant – as you are served with calorie-rich dressings, cream-based soups and sugar-rich desserts. That could be a big mistake that will affect your healthy diet. Here are some other healthy eating restaurant ideas.

– Family-run restaurants are much healthier compared to all-you-can-eat restaurants. The temptation to overeat with the latter is very high since they are buffet styles that do not allow you to have leftovers on your plate.
– Eating half the meal you ordered in a typical restaurant. The food servings are definitely larger than home-made meals. Bringing half of the meal home and eating it later will benefit your waist and save you money.
– When ordering soups, choose broth-based soups instead of cream-based soups. Cream-based definitely contains more calories.
– Green salads are healthy food choices. When ordering a salad in a restaurant, ask for an oil and vinegar on the side instead of salad dressings. Or, you can use lemon squeeze instead of oil and vinegar on your salad. You can sprinkle it then with pepper for more taste.
– Plain food choices instead of fried foods. Baked or broiled chicken, steak or fish are better sources of protein that helps energize the body.

Always remember to choose the meals with the freshest and high-quality ingredients. There are also ways to add flavor to your meals in a healthy way. You can use tomato-based marinara or salsa. You can choose plain rice or potato instead of fries or hash browns. You can choose vegetable side dishes instead of chips or potato fries. Lastly, you can choose plain steaks or chicken breasts instead of main dishes with a lot of oily sauces or gravy.