Choosing Healthy Options at Restaurants: My Journey

If you are anything like me, then you have an internal struggle every single time you go out to eat. Do you use this chance and have that 10% dietary splurge? Or do you still try to stay closer to your diet for the health benefits?

The last few weekends for me have been interesting because I haven’t really wanted to do as crazy of splurges anymore. I still like to choose to have cheese on my sandwich or to sometimes have a milkshake, but I have started cutting out the meat little by little. The only meat that I have eaten on weekend splurge over the last month or 2 has all been either lunch meat or bacon. For some reason, a big slab of meat just doesn’t sound appetizing anymore. Even the lunch meat and the bacon is slowly sounding less and less appetizing.

Another thing I struggle with is the dairy. I think that completely giving up the meat would be easy. It’s the dairy I’d struggle with. I like having an occasional milkshake, or some cheese to top my bean burger. I have been noticing that my stomach hurts pretty bad after eating the dairy products though…I’m just wondering when enough will be enough and I will give it up. I just keep telling myself: baby-steps. This whole going vegan/plant-based thing has been a process, so I just need to continue to make those steps to be closer and closer to where I want to be. I would like to someday go out to eat and make food choices that are vegan or plant-based.

My dad was in town this weekend and so naturally we went out to eat for every dinner. My dad loves to try out new and sometimes quirky places. We had so much fun! We purposely chose restaurants that had vegan and vegetarian options. If you look up restaurants online you can often see their menus and make sure that they have vegan and vegetarian options for you to order. We looked up vegan restaurants and that pulled up a list of restaurants that were either all vegan or at least had vegan options.

We went to the Monument Cafe and I ordered a bean burger, my dad got a mushroom burger and my husband ordered a club sandwich(not vegan).

I think the highlight of the trip was when we went to Sweet Rituals. This is a vegan ice cream shop. It was tasty, and the atmosphere was a out of the ordinary. We had fun people watching and checking out the quirky decorations. My daughter is allergic to dairy so it was nice to let her have some ice cream for a change. To say she liked it would be an understatement. She practically licked the bowl clean!