Had a delicious eye fillet steak (least amount of gristle and fat of all the steaks) with some steamed vegetables, a side salad and a jacket potato (with the sour cream at a minimal). Ok the sour cream is pretty bad, because it was at a restaurant.. but, the good thing about sour cream is that it doesn’t soak into the potato when the potato is baked, so you can choose if you want to eat it or just scrape it onto the side. It does add a different flavour though. All those carbs, but I don’t believe carbohydrates are all that bad anyway - they just need to be consumed responsibly.

Remember, if you get the choice of mashed potato, chips or jacket potato (usually baked in alfoil with its skin still on) in a restaurant, I would probably suggest trying the jacket potato and asking (as a precaution) that no butter be used in it. That way you will only get the sour cream with it.

Chips are deep fried… so I would give them a miss.

Mashed potato in restaurants is not low in fat. To get a delicious taste, chefs usually add a lot of butter and always use full cream milk. They’re all about the taste, not the healthy side of the dish. If you’re making it at home, try what I do, a splash of low fat milk, some chopped shallots (or spring onions), and a clove of garlic. The amount is relevant to how many potatoes you put into it. If you need to, add no more than a teaspoon of butter. It’s still tasty without the extra butter or sour cream etc.

Don’t be afraid to ask for your vegetables to be cooked a certain way. No matter what restaurant I’m in, I always ask for them to come without butter. I ask for this not just because of the healthier choice but also because I tend to find the vegetables all end up tasting like butter. I don’t want them to taste like butter. I want them to taste like the delicious, low fat vegetables that are on my plate! Chefs don’t usually mind making your meal the way you want it. In my opinion, if you’re paying for it, you should get it served the way you want it.

Well my birthday has recently passed and it was great. My sister took me out to a Yum Cha lunch in Chinatown in my city. It was delicious. She brought her kids along with her and we had a ball. It was delicious. Yum Cha can be a very healthy meal… depending on what you choose from the menu. It literally means “drinking tea” so, in a whole you could call it ‘Dim Sum with tea’.

Green tea (the tea you drink at a Yum Cha meal) is very good for you. From sources I’ve found, green tea is suggested to helpful with rheumatoid arthritis, high cholesterol levels (it can help lower them), impaired immune functions and cardiovascular disease. Green tea has powerful anti-oxidants and is often said to be healthier than the normal black tea that many of today’s people drink. Green tea is believed to help with your digestion as well. I believe this is why it is served at a Yum Cha lunch. You can eat the small portions of tasty food and help with your digestion at the same time.

The steamed selection is the preferred if you want to lose weight. This is pretty much a given considering you have a choice of steamed or deep-fried (including spring rolls). In my opinion, the steamed selection has a wider variety of flavours anyway so that’s naturally my choice. You can ask for a menu if you’re not sure what to order. I always make sure I order steamed vegetables (I think it’s chinese spinach). It always comes out hot and with a delicious sesame and oyster sauce.
If you can, and if you don’t mind Chinese food, I strongly recommend giving it ago. There is a large variety of flavours, comes in beef, pork, chicken and seafood and steaming food is probably one of the healthier ways of cooking. If you don’t gorge on the deep-fried stuff (including going for the steamed dumplings instead of the deep fried variety) and go for the steamed healthier selections you will come out of lunch feeling full yet not uncomfortable.

Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas break. I know mine was good.