Dietitian Maya Nahra Discusses Making Healthy Restaurant Choices
Diners visit their favorite restaurants for fulfilling, soul-soothing food they can't get anywhere else. It's no secret, though, that the same food packed with satisfying flavors often provides generous portions of calories and nutrients that are best consumed in moderation. We reached out to Behavioral Registered Dietitian Maya Nahra for some advice on how diners can make decisions that let them enjoy their favorite restaurant meals while sticking to their nutritional goals and values. Maya also offered some tips on how restaurateurs can support their patrons in making health-conscious decisions.
Healthy Food Decisions Start with Healthy Habits
Maya's experience with her clients has proven that many of the common strategies people use to control how they dine out can work well, but only up to a certain point.
"You hear people say, 'Eat less. Put half in a container and take it home,' or, 'Have a burger but don't have the bun and have the fries,'" Maya tells us. "You hear the strategies, and they're common strategies. You can go anywhere on the web and find strategies and tips for eating healthier at restaurants. And that's great. You can have all the strategies and tips you want to, but if you don't have the mindset or the thought patterns to be able to follow through, you're not going to be able to do it."
Maya teaches her clients that healthy decisions begin with healthy habits. "It all comes down to the underlying habits and behaviors beyond the food, meaning that the food is just the symptom. When we're stressed out, we're going to reach for cookies, but we're only stressed out because of the perfectionist, control-freak, all-or-nothing practices that we have. After 11 years, there's one thing I know to be true, and it’s the fact that we've never been enough." Maya suggests that making better food choices begins with how we think about ourselves and how we respond to the feelings that drive us to make decisions we regret.
Maya told us that the key to sticking to your goals is to focus on allowing yourself the pleasures you enjoy rather than depriving yourself with restrictions. A healthy mindset involves seeing each choice as just that - a choice. "We want to be able to say, 'I can have anything that I want to have. Whatever I am going to order is simply a choice. I have a choice in whatever it is I want to have.' People who come from a restriction and deprivation mindset tend to think that they can never get this food ever again. But, when you allow the food instead of restrict the food and say, 'You know what, I can have this in a small amount every day - breakfast lunch and dinner- for the next 2,000 days if I really wanted to.' And of course, chances are, you're not going to want to."
"This isn't a diet. Once you've cultivated your own 'enoughness factor,' for lack of a better term, it becomes habit. It becomes permanent. It isn't about taking a magic pill or going on another diet. This is about putting in permanent, lasting change."
How Restaurant Staff Can Support Diners
Maya offered us some suggestions to pass along to restaurant staff that may help them better support their customers who are trying to cultivate healthy habits. One way that the restaurant community can help is by adjusting the conversations staff members have with guests. "A lot of times we want to be healthy, but we're a little afraid to, say, ask for a go box immediately. If it were already in the system for the server to say, 'Would you like me to pack up half?' There's an opportunity to train all staff to empower guests to make healthy steps through small steps like offering a to-go box up front or offering to pack half a guest's meal to go." Operators should consider building such opportunities into their restaurants' cultures.
Another step towards building a healthier restaurant culture begins in the kitchen. "I know sugar makes things taste better, but the more real, whole food we can use, the better you're going to be. If someone is trying to be healthy at a restaurant, if we are using unprocessed, unbleached flours in our bread, if someone is consuming the bread, it's going to be a healthier version." Small changes like cutting down on added sugar in bread can help guests feel better about the food they're eating.
