Salads aren't always the best thing to order from a chain restaurant, from a calorie standpoint. This is especially true if the salad has something like fried chicken in it. At McDonald's, the Premium Southwest Salad with Crispy Chicken has 430 calories, which is about the same as the 440 calories in a double cheeseburger. (Source: nutrition facts from mcdonalds.com)
It gets worse if you go to a sit-down chain restaurant. California Pizza Kitchen's Field Greens Salad might sound like a healthy choice, but a full order of it, with no meat or cheese, has 998 calories . Calorically, you'd be better off with half of any one of their pizzas (yes, even the Meat Craver's, steak tostada, or mushroom pepperoni sausage ones), or the four cheese ravioli with pomodoro cream sauce. (Source: nutrition information on cpk.com) I'm just comparing straight calories here, not sodium or any other nutrients.
The first takeaway here is that just because it's salad,
doesn't mean it's necessarily low in calories, or that you don't have to worry about portion sizes. The second is that you shouldn't feel guilty about ordering something other than a salad at a restaurant, since the salad might in fact have more calories even than something else that sounds much higher in calories.
Sienna wrote:when I used to eat salad, I used to *feel* like I was eating healthier, so I'd let myself eat other less healthy things as a reward or something.
This is common. It's called the "health halo" effect. People tend to underestimate the calories in something they think is "healthy", and to think that because they ordered something "healthy", they deserve a treat as well. It's especially dangerous if the seemingly healthy dish is high in calories. If you ate half a CPK pizza, you probably wouldn't think you should reward yourself with a dessert. You might think you should reward yourself with a dessert for eating a Field Greens Salad instead of pizza, even though the salad actually has more calories than the half pizza.
If you frequently eat at a particular chain restaurant, it might be worth your while to check any nutrition information they provide and see what's
really high and low in calories, rather than going by what seems like it would be high and low. I don't think you need to consult the nutrition information every time you order, or memorize it, the way someone who counts calories might, but you should at least have an accurate general idea of what is high and low in calories.
If you really want a salad, eat a salad. But
don't assume it's automatically the lowest-calorie thing on the menu, or that you don't need to worry about portion size because it's salad, or that it's good to eat a salad and bad to eat something other than a salad. Nor should you reward yourself with food for choosing a salad. That's too often one step forward and two steps back.
One tip I'd give you: The first few bites are almost always the best part of the eating experience, and your eyes are usually bigger than your stomach (or at least mine are). If something comes in more than one size, don't order the largest size. Order a medium, or a small. A small serving of anything that has calories is going to have fewer of them than a large serving. If it has fat, carbs, sodium, or sugar, a small is going to have less of it than a large. (This all assumes that the small and the large are prepared the same way, just different amounts)
It also looks to me, from this post and some others of yours, like you often have problems when you "eat late" (however that's defined for you). You might want to look at when and why that happens, and try to think of some ways to keep it from happening as often. Your problem might be scheduling, not food. You might need to put a higher priority on eating on your usual schedule, relative to the priority you give to getting other stuff done. Or at least you might need to do that for a little while, until No S seems more natural to you.
Edited to add: It might be enough for you to know that you tend to overeat when you're eating late. If you know that, you might be able to slow yourself down when you're reaching for more food, and say "whoa, Nelly, slow down, you know we always eat too much when we eat late" (or words to that effect). Awareness of what causes a problem can be a powerful tool for fixing the problem.
) of consuming just as many calories for something that I don't really enjoy? Plus, when I used to eat salad, I used to *feel* like I was eating healthier, so I'd let myself eat other less healthy things as a reward or something. Net result: I ate even more and gained more weight. As part of this diet, I've stopped choosing supposedly healthy foods over what I really want to eat - and I've lost weight. That doesn't mean I always eat crap, just that I don't force myself to eat food I don't want in the name of health. 