It’s easy to prepare a healthy dish in your own kitchen when you control the portions and the ingredients. But in a restaurant, making healthy choices is a bit more difficult with so many items on the menu over-saturated with cheese, oil, sodium or cream sauces.

Today, my mom and I went out to lunch together. I picked Jason’s Deli, and both my mom and I got the salad bar with a cup of chicken tortilla soup. The salad bar is full of lots more than just veggies: pasta salad, egg salad, nuts and seeds, granola, trail mix, fruit and yogurt, mini cornbread and gingerbread muffins, hummus and crackers. If you’re not careful, a trip to the salad bar can be just as many calories as their broccoli cheddar baked potato!

I forgot to snap a picture until after I’d had a scoop of tabbouleh. With so many toppings, my plate filled up FAST. It was such a hodge-podge though…

(Chicken tortilla Soup) It’s a lot easier to eat healthily at a restaurant when you have someone else with you doing the same. I’m fortunate enough that my mom has the same attitude as me towards working out and eating and we  love trying new things! But of course we had to treat ourselves to some of the free soft serve ice cream (it is 104 degrees outside!)

Little cup of vanilla chocolate swirl with a broken up graham cracker was the perfect way to end the meal! Yes, this lunch was probably a few hundred calories more than my usual, but that just means I shift my daily calories around to adjust. For instance, this morning I avoided carbs and had a strawberry banana smoothie, and tonight I will keep it light and simple.