Find Restaurants with Low-Calorie Entrees Besides Just Salad!

What if there were a way to know which restaurants make healthy dishes under 600 calories? I'm not talking about just salad or the same old sandwiches at Subway. I'm talking real restaurant food, the kind you risk overeating for, because it tastes so good.

Well, now there's a new startup company in Los Angeles that aims to do just that for us Calorie Rebels. ThinDish partners with local restaurants to show you what entrees on their menu are under 600 calories. And not only that, but they'll have icons on the menu to indicate what is low-carb, or gluten-free, or diabetic-friendly -- and many other special considerations. They've even partnered with a lab to do the calorie analysis, so it's gotta be more reliable than the restaurants themselves -- who've been caught advertising fewer calories and fat than their food actually contains!

ThinDish is an idea whose time has come! Check out ThinDish.com to sign up before their official launch.

The ThinDish landing page is mysterious because they haven't officially launched yet, but go to their ThinDish partner website to find out about what their service will do for the diner, as well as the restaurant.  All they need to do now is get Yelp! and Weight Watchers and LA restaurant reviewer Jonathan Gold on board and we'll have the whole spectrum of diners covered.

Woo-hoo! It's safe to enter a restaurant again!

Assembling a balanced, quick, healthy meal that's high in flavor and low in calories

A tasty quick lunch of balanced macronutrient ratios: weight-loss meal, high protein, low calorie.
50% carbs, 30% fat, 20% protein

Forget cooking. Sometimes we're just too busy.
That's when we need the art of food assembly. 
The picture above shows a food assembly: a balanced, easy-to-throw-together meal that hits 100% on all targets: it's simple, quick, flavorful, and balanced in terms of macronutrient ratios. Plus the whole plate clocks in at about 330 calories: a lot of food for the caloric price.

I first heard of macronutrient ratios from my personal trainer at Myogenics Fitness, and online you'll find many different opinions about what ratio is best. But for me, at least, 50-30-20 ratio is ideal for weight loss or weight maintenance.  The 50-30-20 ratio means: 50% carbohydrate (low-glycemic, unrefined, or "good") carbs, 30% fat and 20% protein.

(If you're not doing moderate to intense cardio exercise every day, you might want to bump the carbs down to 40% and the protein up to 30%, and that's the same ratio popularized in The Zone Diet. But experiment and see what works for you.)

Fat Myth: A lot of people think a healthy diet means: avoid fat like the plague. If you think 30% fat seems like a lot for weight loss, the undisputed truth is that most Americans eat too much refined carbs and that's why we're a fat nation. So keeping refined carbs in check using ratios is a good strategy.
But! It's actually hard to get 20% protein without some fat, so you'll probably have to pay attention to your assembly's added fat sources. Watch out for added cheese, nuts and dressings.


More about this picture:
20% Protein: one whole egg + one egg white scrambled and seasoned with citrusy Asian ponzu sauce.
Plus 3/4 cup of low-fat cottage cheese.
There is also protein in the steamed organic purple potato and the steamed broccoli jazzed up with some low-fat, high-flavor Galeo's Miso dressing.  Love that stuff!
50% Carbohydrate: The potato and broccoli, and there's also carbs in the low-fat cottage cheese.
30% Fat: Half a pat of butter for scrambling the egg; and the yolk in the whole egg, which is a good source of amino acids like tyrosine.

Did you know that broccoli and potatoes contain a lot of protein per gram?
This pile of broccoli -- (5.75 oz or about one whole stalk) -- has more protein than one large egg white.