Have you ever been sitting in a restaurant and wondered how many calories or grams of fat were in the food in front of you? Nope? Okay, you’re not as weird as me, but I wonder all the time, and after reading this maybe you should too.

Some have the information available upon request, but most do not make it available. Well my aunt sent me an email that had the worst restaurant meals and their calorie content and nutritional breakdown.

These are just some examples.

McDonald’s 5-Piece Chicken Selects with Ranch Sauce has over 800 calories with 55g of fat. 55 grams of fat! That’s crazy. Especially when you consider that they were advertised under the guise of health food because they were supposed to be chicken breast, but even chicken breast is unhealthy when soaked in batter and fried.

However, my favorite was the Jamba Juice smoothie. When you hear milkshake you probably think it’s healthy, right? This is how they are marketed after all. But this Jamba Juice smoothie had 900 calories, with 160g of sugar! That is incredible!

By the way, those two I just gave you are “the best of the worst.” There were many with more than 1,500 and 2,000 calories. That’s the number of calories many people should consume in a full day if they want to lose fat, and these entrees (or some appetizers) have them all in one sitting.

Hearing numbers like that, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we have an obesity epidemic in this country. We just eat too much, or don’t pay attention to what’s going on in our mouths, and don’t realize it until it turns into sticky fat that settles on our stomach, butt, or thighs.

You need to be careful with any food when dining out. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go out to eat. Quite the contrary. I think we need to get out of the house and go to restaurants. I would go crazy and claustrophobic if I didn’t leave the house and eat in restaurants. What I am saying is that you must understand that many foods and drinks are not prepared with the idea that they will keep your waistline in check.

They are made to taste as good and as cheap as possible because restaurants need to make money, after all. So, to make many foods taste better, they are fried, sautéed, or otherwise prepared to increase the fat, because fat makes foods taste better, or covered in creams and sauces loaded with sugar and fat.

So here are a couple of tips to keep in mind when dining out.

First of all, avoid the appetizer. Appetizers are often loaded with fat, and this includes vegetable dishes because they come with some kind of dipping sauce.

Next, avoid anything fried, sautéed, or cooked in any type of sauce. It may sound healthy because it’s salmon, chicken, or vegetarian, but if it’s fried, sautéed, or cooked in a sauce, it’s high in fat and high in calories.

Finally, if you have decided that you are going to eat poorly when you are eating in a restaurant, at least order half a meal. The full order ratios are so out of control that they could feed an entire village in some starving country. So do yourself a favor and order a half order, or split it with whoever you’re having dinner with.

Another easy thing to do is have a drink of water between each bite. The water will fill you up a little faster, which means you won’t be able to eat as much, which means you won’t store as much fat.

I hope I have enlightened you a bit and start eating a little more consciously when you are away from home.