Sometimes I talk to clients about the pressure of making healthy food choices when you are out with friends for drinks or some sort outing such as employee functions, family parties or other social events. When there is delicious food like buffalo wings, bread, or cheese fondue out… one wants to partake in the festivities that the event is offering. In addition, there might also be beer, wine, and other mixed drinks that probably aren’t the healthiest for the human body to consume in massive quantities. When confronted with the situation, some people feel that it may be rude to not partake in some of the delicious food that is being offered for the social events. Consuming too much of this food can play a big impact on your goals to maintain healthy weight and lean muscle.
So, what can you do in this situation?
A good solution instead of completely abstaining from everything and eating a green salad and drinking water every time you go out, would be too pick a number of the amount of snacks that you want to eat. For example, if there are fried egg rolls in front of you that was made by one of your favorite employees or bosses or friends… pick a number, like two, and eat just two over the whole night instead of just grazing aimlessly the entire night on random snacks. Grazing will lead to overconsumption and you won’t even know how many items of food you’ve eaten.
In addition, when it comes to alcoholic drinks pick the amount of drinks that you’re going to have. Instead of just filling up drinks one after the other… before you go into the event, choose your threshold of drink capacity. An example might be one to two glasses of beer and/or wine, or maybe just one mixed drink over the whole night.
Social situations are always challenging when it comes to maintaining weight especially because a lot of social gatherings are surrounded around restaurants, drinking alcohol, and food. More often than not, the healthiest food choices are not available during these meetings in most social circles. So use some of these queues to count the amount of items that you consume over the night and set a limit to it. This way you won’t have to appear like you’re being rude to your host or the person who’s taking you out to eat. And you can still maintain your health and fitness goals.
