Skip to main content

Just say no...to chain restaurants

In our efforts to skinny down this year, Big Daddy and I have curbed our eating out and takeout habits. This list reinforces the Why.

Some of these are no-brainers -- Denny's, Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins -- but others surprise me. Lemme just say ew gross! to Macaroni Grill for duping us all these years with their "salads." And Baja Fresh don't sound so fresh to me.

Sadly, the two places we have "dined" in (and I use the term loosely) recently are Chili's and Applebee's because they both have lower-calorie menu options (and because they're cheap and kid-friendly). Who knew that even Chili's "Guiltless Grill" should cause so much shame?

And why haven't Applebee's (home of the Weight Watchers partnership), Friday's, and Outback yet published their nutrition information? Whatever could they be hiding? (The last time we ate at Outback, easily five years ago, I ordered a medium steak and the waitress came out to tell me they were all out of medium steaks. Huh? Can't you just throw a rare steak on the barbie for a few minutes longer? Evidently, the pre-packaged steaks are not so made-to-order as they'd have you believe.)

The big surprise on this list: McDonald's scored a B+ because of their salads and yogurt choices. Wonders never cease.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha

Lost between books

This is kinda what the inside of my brain looks like right now...a big see of books that don't interest me. I'm in a restless state between novels right now, and it's really uncomfortable. You know that feeling when you finish a really good one and don't know what to do next? I needed a couple days to process the book I finished last week ( Everything I Never Told You , by Celeste Ng), but then suddenly found myself without a Next Book. It doesn't happen often (I usually have 4-5 books going at once, all different genres and types), but every now and again I get stuck in this drift. Nothing really interests me enough to invest money and time in. So. Weird. I've spent way too much time over the weekend downloading samples to my Kindle, reading reviews on Goodreads, and perusing the library reading lists. Me without a book is like a guitarist without her guitar or a soccer player without a field to run on. I just feel a bit lost, even irritable. I'm just