Getting 1/2 To Go!!

Ok, so my husband and I were going to an Italian restaraunt for his birthday... GIVE ME A BREAK!!! I'm a carboholic and boy was that a challenge!  Before we left, I got online to the website for Johnny Carino's and looked up nutritional info.  I found that the Chicken Parmesian only had 600 something calories for a dinner.  When we showed up, his parents had already ordered appetizers.... all fried of course! UGH!  I decided that I would take a bite of a couple of things... just one bite. 

Then, when the waitress came, I asked her to please put 1/2 of my Chicken Parmesian in a "to go" container and only bring me half to the table.  I felt SO GOOD doing that.

When the meals came, I had just the right amount to be satisfied and I knew I was within my calories means with the bites that I Tried of other things!

Thought it might help someone to have that idea!

Nicole

Congrats and good job.

Ive done that too but never thought to ask for it advance - I like how that further avoids temptation.  The best is getting to have a really great meal - twice.  This is especially helpful when the heatthy options still come in pretty high cal.

That is a great idea! Restaurant portions are often sooo oversized anyways because I guess that's how they justify it to the customers when they charge $20 for a dish of pasta.

Did the waitress/anyone at your table make a fuss about you doing that? Just curious... not that it should really matter, we gotta do what we gotta do for ourselves!!

Kind of off subject, or maybe not.....but how does chicken parmesan only have 600 calories for a dinner portion? I'm not arguing with you, I'm just jealous!! That seems kind of shady to me.....The only reason I say this is that I'm a FOOL for eggplant parmesan but when I checked the calorie content for the dinner size at Macaroni Grill it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000-1200 calories!!

EDIT: Double Checked....1240 calories.....So Sad....

I just always ask for a take-home container at the end because you never know if then they'll skimp on the amount of food they give you (for the money you pay), and you can also visually see what would be 1/2 on your plate.  Plus it's more fun to have a huge plate of stuff to look at, knowing you're not gonna eat it all.  It's also fun to put it in the container yourself! (and you know they aren't gonna spit in it or something lol)

Hmmm....Ok, so because I was curious, I looked up Johnny Carino's (we don't have them here...but it looks yummy!) and the only nutritional information I found was for the Chicken Primavera (totally different from Chicken Parmigiana) and it WAS 600 calories....

Here's the question.....Which did you order and eat?? LOL Hopefully it was the Primavera and not the Parmigiana!!

I WORK at Johnny Carino's and the Chicken Parmigiana has way over 1,000 calories. The Chicken Primavera is the one for 600 cal. So I hope that is what you got!!!! BTW- welcome to my life every day I work!!! :-)

 

Original Post by c_jamie:

That is a great idea! Restaurant portions are often sooo oversized anyways because I guess that's how they justify it to the customers when they charge $20 for a dish of pasta.

Did the waitress/anyone at your table make a fuss about you doing that? Just curious... not that it should really matter, we gotta do what we gotta do for ourselves!!

The ladies that come into the one that I work at do that A LOT. I always understand and their families usually never finish their plates either. No one ever teases though, I think EVERYONE knows that our portions are HUGE!

Also, just to let you know... the nutrition information is for 100grams of food... and they give you WAY more then 100grams of food.  So that's just an FYI, places will do anything to make you think you can eat a huge plate of food drenched in sea salt and olive oil for 600 calories.  (my friend works there and said the chicken diavano or whatever it's called is soaked in olive oil and they pour it all over the beans that come with it too, and then to top it off they lather it with sea salt.

I think 56grams of pasta is like a tennis ball, so I guess 100grams is a little less then 2 tennis balls.

Sometimes I want to do this, but at the same time, I don't like letting people know that I'm dieting.  Boxing away food before starting might look bizarre to my friends. Is there some other way to do this, like some reasonable excuse? If they don't know I'm counting calories and I claim that it's too much to eat and box it away before touching it, I'm afraid of coming across rather analretentive.

I'm not sure if this post makes much sense...

hello_sunshine - Your post makes SO much sense.... esp because I am exactly like you!! I don't like letting people know that I'm watching my diet too.
I usually just claim its too much for me to eat or something. (However, before I started dieting, I never left anything on my plate and cleaned up other people's plates as well!)

Its tough!! But there's really no other way around it I guess...

I think that if you can eyeball/feel the amount your eating you'll be fine to box it after saying how full you are and no one will care! A Lot of people like to box beforehand so they know they aren't eating more than intended. What you could do is try to split it with someone else then you can use a small plate to eat off of.

I don't consider myself "dieting" but I would never eat all that food in one sitting. Probably not even half.