Quote:
Originally Posted by will76
No city in the world has better food than New Orleans, so it makes it even harder for people living here to be in shape. Everything is either fried, soaked in oils, made with heavy creams or covered in cheese. But the food is damn good. Ate out tonight but had fajitas (grilled steak, chicken and shrimp) so it wasn't that bad and I ate a pretty small portion, for me at least. How do you even begin to count calories when you are eating out?
|
Well, I can only use euro metrics now otherwise my brain would jam...
Calories are not all that important, much more important is how and what you consume that accounts for the total intake
Calories are just metrics but what matters is the balance
Each meal should be, say very roughly:
30 g protein
30 - 100 g carbohydrate
5 - 20 g fat
Carbohydrates and proteins have the same energetic value per g
fat has twice as much per g
So all the play with calories is tricky, you need balance
you need fat, without fat your hormones wouldn't work properly, but not more than cca 50 g a day, the rest stores easily, now do a math and it's not all that easy to keep fat at 50 - 70 g a day, cause it's put into everything, like the oil the meat is done with, all kinds of sauces, deserts, apetizers etc.
Then let's try to put together an ideal serving:
100 g of meat is cca 30 g of protein + a couple g of fat depending on the type of meat
100 g of spagheti or rice is cca 70 g carbohydrates + cca 8 - 10 g protein
add vegetables and you have a balanced meal, something that's exactly what you need nutritionally and energywise
Now consider a typical restaurant serving:
330 g of meat - that's way too much unless you're a powerlifter
100 - 200 g carbohydrates - too much
30 - 100 g fat - deserts, sauces, oil etc. etc. - way too much
In most cases, you basically eat two to three times what you can use and burn when eating out, so eating out is the best and easiest way to gain fat.
Robert De Niro used to dine in the best French restaurants in Paris, when he needed to gain weight during the filming of the "Raging Bull" - he put up 20 pounds in one month