Eating in restaurants when you’re on a restricted diet can be maddeningly difficult if not impossible. Every restaurant dish is loaded with salt and/or fat and/or sugar or other sweeteners.
You could become a hermit, eating every meal at home, the same boring things over and over again, cutting yourself off from the larger world around you. But who wants to do that with their lives?A recent steakhouse order for me, no sauces, no butter, no sour cream but a great filet mignon.
While it’s been impossible for me to maintain my restricted diet while on vacation in Italy this past week and a half, one pleasant menu surprise here is that nearly every restaurant, large and small, has a plate of grilled vegetables on its menu.
On Thursday, we stopped at a tiny, nondescript place that likely would be thought of as a greasy spoon in the States, only to find a menu full of salads and sporting the ubiquitous grilled veggies, which I ordered. What I received was delightful, including eggplant, squash and even some spinach along with mushrooms and carrots, all grilled without any harmful sauces and what seemed like very little salt. Veggie plates are common in Italy, why can’t U.S. places offer the same?Continue reading “Why aren’t grilled vegetable plates common in America?”→
I’ve been doing my best since I arrived in southern Italy to eat the way I’m supposed to on my restricted diet but doing that is proving impossible. I cannot avoid pasta here and I can’t find whole wheat pasta which is the only type I am supposed to eat these days.
What I am doing is eating smaller portions of pasta than would be served in American restaurants. Portions are smaller here because places serve the traditional Italian multi-course dinners. In those the pasta course is just a prelude to the fish or meat course and so not massive in size.My first course, pasta with tomatoes and eggplantsContinue reading “Can you stay on a restricted diet in the land of pasta and seafood?”→
As I began my vacation, I was trying to stay on my restricted diet by ordering a special meal for my flight to Italy. Delta, as do most airlines I think, allows you to special order all sorts of meals ahead of your flight. I visited its website a few days before our departure and asked for a no-salt/low-salt meal.
What greeted me on the plane reminded me why I don’t miss airline food on domestic flights. A low-salt airline meal on Delta…cheese, salad dressing, white rice? Really?
The meal I received included a bland chicken breast and white rice (which I’m not supposed to eat, only brown rice is allowed by my nutritionist). The small salad came with a dressing that likely had salt so I left it. A piece of cheese, something else I can’t eat because of fat and salt, also was included. Really? Cheese on a low-salt diet? Salad dressing on a low-salt diet?
If this was any indication what was ahead for me, I was in for a long trip. Luckily, since we have arrived in Italy, the food choices have been much more varied, and enjoyable for me. Keep reading to see what I’ve been eating in the land of my ancestor’s birth. John
Eating out is an ordeal for anyone on a restricted diet. I have cut back tremendously on the times each week I eat out with my wife and stopped going to several old favorites that don’t offer any low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar dishes that I find acceptable.
Before we eat out these days, I always try to scrutinize menus in advance to see what my options might be. Doing that helped my wife and I have a wonderful evening a few weeks ago at a completely unexpected locale, a Romanian restaurant in Chicago called Little Bucharest.
We were headed to a play in a section of Chicago I wasn’t familiar with in terms of restaurant options. So I checked on Google maps and found several places near the theater, only to be disappointed by one menu after another that was mostly pub food — unacceptable fatty beef, ribs, fried foods, etc.My Romanian salmon
Little Bucharest, however, had a broiled salmon dish on its menu that sounded acceptable and even tasty. It was served over a bed of leeks, peppers and potatoes. There was a light sauce, which I probably shouldn’t have gotten but it wasn’t on the fish. It all tasted great and we were treated to a musical group playing there as well, creating a memorable evening for us.
Bravo to owner Bronko, please add more dishes I can eat so we can visit again.
John
I woke up early this morning fighting a mild cold with a bit of an upset stomach. Still in all, I woke up glad to be alive. Six months ago today, I was being wheeled into a surgery to save my life. Doctors had discovered one of the arteries around my heart was 80 percent blocked, meaning blood was barely getting through.
An angioplasty took place, a procedure in which doctors used a small balloon to clear the blockage and then inserted a stent, a wire mesh tube, to keep my artery open. It’s fair to say that changed my life, giving me years I likely would not have otherwise had, hopefully.Me before my surgeryMe today, 29 pounds lighter
It also changed my food life more radically than anything else that has ever happened to me. My diet now bears little resemblance to what it had been. Gone are the daily chocolate candies, snack cakes and diet sodas that once were staples for me. Gone are burgers from McDonald’s, Wendy’s and elsewhere. My lunch almost every day now is a salad with oil and vinegar which I carry myself since most places don’t have it as an option. Dinners involve more vegetables and also more ground turkey, more fish and an occasionally very lean steak or 96 percent lean ground beef burger. White bread, rice and anything made with white flour are out.
The result? When I checked into a hospital Aug. 13, 2012, I weighed 219. This morning, six months later, I weigh 190, so I’ve lost 29 pounds in six months by eliminating everything I once loved from my diet.
I am constantly hungry these days, my appetite has not receded as predicted by some know-it-alls. And my taste for chocolate has not disappeared either. Indeed, yesterday I had the first real chocolate chip cookie I’ve eaten in months and it was amazingly good. This morning, to celebrate my anniversary, I ate the last two Drake’s Yodels I bought on eBay after parent company Hostess went into bankruptcy at the end of last year. And they tasted as wonderful as I remembered.
But like a diabetic who can no longer eat sugar, I can no longer eat my favorite foods if I want to continue living. So I am slowly finding substitute dishes, remaking old recipes with new healthier ingredients, and adapting. In six months, I have established a fairly decent home cooking routine that takes care of most dinners. Lunches out are salads, as I mentioned, boring but not harmful. And my wife and I are slowly assembling a new list of restaurants that have healthy dishes or that can accommodate me when I call ahead and say I want dishes with no salt, no fat and no sugar involved.
I’ve also thrown myself into a wonderful new avocation, acting. I’ve wanted to try acting since I was a kid but was too shy in those days. Luckily, my wife and I starting an acting class before my surgery and I fell in love with the whole process. Now, acting gives me the escape from everyday trials and troubles that food once did. As I write this, I’m preparing to be in my first student-made film and a play I wrote myself.
So if you’ve faced massive life changes like I have and had to leave your safety blanket of old foods behind, take some heart from my experiences. Rebuild and find new ways to enjoy the life you have now. I’m here to help. John
My second day of trying to eat healthy on a vacation to Orlando in late December saw us spending the day at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure theme park. Universal has two parks now, somewhat different from the last time I was there with my children back in 1996. The adventure one revolves around Harry Potter and a very cool re-creation of his school and surrounding village. Ominous food clouds hung over Universal StudiosContinue reading “Can you eat healthy at Universal Studios? Not even Harry Potter could help”→
I like to frequent restaurants and fast food outlets. I grew up in an era when eating out was a special treat so being able to do it whenever I want gives me a sense of having reached a secure financial state.
But given my recent artery and heart problems, I have cut back dramatically on my eating out. Where once it was common for my wife and I to have three meals out each weekend, we now seldom eat out more than once a weekend, cooking most of our own food to be sure we are getting low to no salt, sugar and fat in our dishes.
If you’re wondering what to order when you find yourself eating out, check out the American Heart Association website page called Tips By Cuisine which tackles the issue of eating out for people with heart problems and coronary disease. A recent steakhouse order for me, no sauces, no butter and no sour cream but a great little filet mignon, a lean cut of meat.
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 