How to lose weight when you eat out

What a calorie deficit is and how to work it out

A calorie deficit is the gap between the energy you use in a day and the energy you eat. Daily energy use is usually estimated in two steps. First comes resting energy, what your body uses even at rest. The widely used Mifflin-St Jeor equation calculates it from your weight, height, age and sex. The result is then multiplied by an activity factor, from 1.2 for a mostly seated day to 1.9 for a very active one.

To lose weight, a common approach is to eat about 500 kcal a day less than that. A very low intake is hard to keep up for long, and the usual advice is not to go below 1,200 kcal a day for women or 1,500 kcal for men.

Take a woman who is 45, 166 cm tall, weighs 64 kg and is moderately active. Her resting energy comes to about 1,290 kcal. Multiplied by 1.55, that’s around 2,000 kcal a day, and with 500 kcal taken off, her target is 1,500 kcal.

How much of it goes to lunch

If you eat three times a day, it helps to split the target between the meals. NourFit then gives lunch 40% of the day, breakfast 25% and dinner 35%. On a 1,500 kcal day that makes lunch 600 kcal. You don’t need to hit it to the calorie, so the app counts a lunch of 525-675 kcal as a good fit.

Your split can look different. Whether you lose weight depends on what you eat over the whole day, while the timing of meals mostly affects when you get hungry. If you skip breakfast, lunch and dinner can both be bigger.

Where the calories hide in restaurant food

Two dishes with the same meat can be far apart because of the side, the sauce and the fat used in cooking. Fat has 9 kcal per gram, protein and carbs 4 kcal each. Ten grams of oil add about 90 kcal that you can hardly see in the finished dish.

Using typical food-table values, 150 g of chips come to around 470 kcal and 200 g of boiled potatoes to about 175 kcal. Thirty grams of tartare sauce add another 120 kcal. With a breaded schnitzel, the side and the sauce alone can move your lunch by more than 400 kcal.

Count your drinks too. Half a litre of lager or of sugary cola has around 210 kcal, and alcohol itself has 7 kcal per gram.

How to choose from the menu

Look at the menu before you get there. Deciding on an empty stomach is harder.

• Pick a dish with a source of protein, such as meat, fish, eggs, pulses or tofu. Protein keeps you full for longer than the same calories from carbs or fat.
• Choose grilled, roasted or braised dishes over fried ones. Breaded meat soaks up fat in the fryer.
• Swap chips or croquettes for boiled potatoes, rice or vegetables if the kitchen allows it.
• Ask for the sauce or dressing on the side and add as much as you want.
• With soup, go for a clear broth or a vegetable soup. Cream soups and thick soups with sausage carry more calories.
• You don’t have to finish the plate. Many places will pack up what you leave.

When lunch turns out heavier

What counts for weight loss is how you eat on most days. If lunch was heavy, a lighter dinner evens it out. If a whole day goes off plan, carry on as usual the next day without making up for it by going hungry.

How accurate restaurant numbers are

Most restaurants don’t publish nutrition values, so the numbers for their dishes are nearly always estimates. That goes for this guide and for apps too. A cook may serve a bigger portion, use more oil or change the side. An estimate still helps you compare two dishes and pick the lighter one, even if it won’t be right to the gram.