As dieters (and/or maintain-ers), nothing can excite us and, at the same time, strike fear into every fibre of our being as dining out can. Thankfully, today’s Rockstar Dieting Tip offers a way to half your cake and eat it, too. (Read on!)

Rockstar Dieting Tip #4 — When Dining Out, Split Your Meal with Yourself
Here’s a little something I learned from one of my famous actress friends here in Los Angeles. When dining out at a restaurant, order what you want with reckless abandon. But — while placing your order, tell your server you want the food split in half — and that you want 1/2 of the meal put into a to-go container before it’s even delivered to the table. This way you’re enjoying your favorite foods at your favorite restaurants — but in more reasonable (and more diet- or weight maintenance-friendly) portions. In other words, you really can have your cake and eat it, too. Just make sure you half your cake (or whatever) before having it. Then take the extra portion home to share with a roommate, spouse or to even have yourself (at another appropriate mealtime).

This might seem like a simple thing to do. But it’s not necessarily easy. After all, when we sit down to dine at our favorite eateries, we sometimes want to enjoy the bigger portions. But we never enjoy the overstuffed, bloated feeling we have after the meal is consumed. And we never enjoy having to squeeze into our jeans the next day (or, worse yet, see a “gain” on the scale the next time we weigh ourselves).

That makes this a great tip for being moderate while enjoying different types of foods. (Not to mention this tip allows us to have a social life even while trying to just stop eating so much!)

As dieters, we too often get caught up in the “This is the last time I’ll ever eat this” syndrome (thanks to years of on-again and off-again dieting). This little restaurant trick stops that mentality in it’s tracks. We can have it — we can just choose to not have so much of it.

And don’t worry about what the server thinks. You can add a little something extra to the tip if he or she is nice about dividing your meal in half at the beginning of your dining experience. And you can take pride in knowing you’re doing the same thing some major actresses do to keep their camera-ready figures.

And why shouldn’t you do the same as them? You’re a supermodel, darn it. And if anyone questions that, you send them to me.

Photo Source: L’Espresso Food & Wine