Eat This Not That! Restaurant Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution [Paperback]

David Zinczenko (Author), Matt Goulding (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 24, 2009

Americans spend more than $500 billion a year eating out, and behind each burger, turkey sandwich, and ice cream sundae is a simple decision that could help you control your weight--and your life. The problem is, restaurant chains and food producers aren't interested in helping you make healthy choices. In fact, they invest $30 billion a year on advertising, much of it aimed at confusing eaters and disguising the fat and calorie counts of their products.

 

Thankfully Eat This, Not That! Restaurant Survival Guide is here to help. It’s the first book in the Eat This, Not That! series to focus solely on burger shacks, pizza parlors, pasta joints, breakfast diners, Mexican cantinas, Chinese eateries, drive-thrus, and coffee shops. With in-depth coverage of 80 of the biggest restaurant chains in the country, it arms you with the information you need to take control of your diet and sidestep the egregious calorie-landmines that are secretly sabotaging your chances of losing weight. And why would restaurants do such a thing? Because people keep buying. The top brass at any restaurant knows that the more food that goes onto the plate, the more drastically the customers will underestimate the caloric heft. That’s why the average cheeseburger has 136 more calories today than it did in the 1970s and why two-thirds of the country is now overweight or obese.
 
Additional features in Eat This, Not That! Restaurant Survival Guide include:
· Restaurant Report Card: America’s Best and Worst Restaurants
· The Menu Decoder: rules for navigating any menu in the country  
· The Buffet Survival Guide
· The New Rules of Eating Out
· 50 Great Restaurant Meals under 500 Calories
· Money- (and Calorie-) Saving Guide to Making Your Favorite Restaurant Meals—at Home!

Loaded with tips on everything from navigating neighborhood restaurant menus to making smart choices in the drive-thru to cutting cash and calories at the country’s largest chain restaurants, Eat This, Not That! Restaurant Survival Guide is the indispensable encyclopedia to the world of eating out.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Eat This, Not That!:
“I love nutrition, I’ve gone to nutritionists, but putting it in this kind of stuff that we recognize in our everyday lives with our families, is truly educational. This is great.”

-- Bonnie Hunt, host of The Bonnie Hunt Show

 

“Don’t stop eating the things you love just be cognizant when you walk in the restaurant of how much sodium is in your dishes.”

-- Dr. Travis Stork, co-host of The Doctors

 

“For all the criticism [Eat This, Not That!] leveled against some of these restaurant chains in the past, they are listening and making improvements.”

-- Matt Lauer, co-host of the Today Show

 

“I Think Eat This, Not That! is a brilliant book.”

--Rachael Ray

 

“We eat out all the time, and this is the fastest, cheapest, smartest plan I can imagine. It really revitalized our family.”

-- Dusty Robinson, Eat This, Not That! reader, who used this book with his parents and they lost a combined 70 pounds.

About the Author

DAVID ZINCZENKO, editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Abs Diet and The Abs Diet for Women. He is a regular contributor to the Today show and has appeared on Oprah, Good Morning America, and Primetime Live.

MATT GOULDING is the food and nutrition editor of Men’s Health. He has cooked and eaten his way around the world, touching down in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; 1 edition (November 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160529540X
• ISBN-13: 978-1605295404
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Diets & Weight Loss > Food Counters
  • #29 in Books > Education & Reference > Consumer Guides

More About the Author

DAVID ZINCZENKO, SVP/Editor-in-Chief of Men's Health magazine and Editorial Director of Women's Health magazine, is the author of New York Times bestsellers The Abs Diet and The Abs Diet for Women. Once an overweight child, Zinczenko has become one of the nation's leading experts on health and fitness. He is a regular contributor to the Today show and has appeared on Oprah, Good Morning America, Primetime Live, 20/20, The Rachael Ray Show, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#33 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#73 in Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#33 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#73 in Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great little guide regarding restaurant food July 19, 2010

By Alain B. Burrese TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"Eat This Not That" by David Zinczenko with Matt Gooulding is described on the cover as a "Restaurant Survival Guide" and "The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution." The restaurant survival guide is pretty accurate if surviving a restaurant is choosing lower calorie foods over those with sometimes more calories for a meal than you should be eating all day. The no-diet weight loss solution is based on just eating the healthier choices provided which will automatically cut calories and thus, lead to weight loss if all other factors remain the same.

Obviously, loosing fat has a number of variables. Your exercise is a huge one, and what you consume is another. This book will help you make smarter choices when dining at your favorite restaurant so that you consume less calories. It does not have all the choices you will face when staring at a menu, but has some of the best and worst for you to compare.

The book starts with a brief introduction regarding restaurant choices and how Americans have gotten fatter over the years. It then tells you how this book can help. I agree, the book can help. The book then shares a couple of "top swaps" before explaining the new rules of eating out. This section provides some good tips to help you stay on your diet and eat healthier. This section also shares some secrets the restaurants don't want you to know, such as how many calories supersizing adds, what's in a Chicken McNugget, or what's in a Wendy's Frosty.

Next comes a chapter on the best and worst restaurant foods in America. Things such as the Best Kid's Fast Food which they list as McDonald's 4-Piece McNuggets with Apple Dippers, Caramel Dip, and 1% milk. (Personally, we've gotten this for our daughter, but don't give her the Caramel Dip - why ruin a perfectly good apple?...) The best fast food burger is listed as Wendy's 1/4 Pound Single and best sit-down burger is Red Robin's Natural Burger. Number one on the worst list was Outback's Baby Back Ribs full rack with a whopping 3,021 calories.

The next section of the book is an alphabetical list of restaurants with some of the best and worst foods. Thus the "Eat This and Not That." There are full color pictures throughout that tended to make me hungry when I looked at the book before eating. I mean, come on, some of those bad foods look so good. However, so did many of the better choices. There are also little tidbits and interesting facts throughout the book. It's easy to read, and pretty interesting. (That is if you are interested in what you are eating and what it contains, especially calories.)

Each restaurant has one main dish to eat vs. a bad one, and then a few other picks and other passes. Take Olive Garden for instance. The Eat this choice is the Venetian Apricot Chicken and the choice to pass is Garlic-Herb Chicken Con Broccoli. Other picks include the Lasagna Classico, Grilled Chicken Spiedini, and Herb-Grilled Salmon. Other passes were Spaghetti & Meatballs, Chicken Scampi, and Grilled Shrimp Caprese.

Next comes the menu decoder. This is a great section that explains a lot about what you see on the menu and will make you much more aware of the choices you are making. And finally there was a little bit about eating at airports, vending machines, amusement parks and such places.

Obviously, if you eat at the same restaurant frequently, you will run out of good choices listed in the book. However, with the information here, you will be so much better prepared to select the foods that fit with your dietary goals. I really like the book and think it's a handy guide regarding restaurant food.

Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of Hard-Won Wisdom From the School of Hard Knocks. Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Love them March 2, 2010

By Barbara Ekorenrud

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

purchased these books for my husband, who is a firm believer in not dieting but realized he needed to change his eating habits- he loves these books- finds that just having the information available in an easy to understand way, is helping him make better choices- I'm finding that it is helping me also to make healthier decisions also.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good information January 9, 2010

By "Leo"

Format:Paperback

This is an okay book that encourages people to eat healthier by planning what to eat before dining out. I found myself shocked at some of the ridiculously high calorie foods, and the high sodium levels in foods that I though were healthy. The book breaks it down to different eateries and gives 3 alternative healthy choices, as well as, 3 alternative poor choices. I was surprised that in some cases a donut is the healthier choice when going to my favorite coffee shop. This is a very simple book that can be read/scanned very quickly and just stored away. I got through the whole book in about 20 minutes, and it only took that long because I was so shocked at some of the findings. Makes me want to stay in to prepare my own meals.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW - You Won't Believe What YOU Are EATING When You EAT OUT - 5 STARS !!! January 22, 2011

By A Customer TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

You go to Burger King with your family and you think by ordering a BK Big Fish Sandwich for yourself, you're doing the right thing. Meanwhile one of your children orders two, not one, but two Whopper Jr's, and the reality is
you are taking in more calories than your son. You eat the fish and you wind up hurting yourself.

You go to TGIF, you order the Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad, it sounds great, chicken is good for you, and so is salad. You have just consumed 1300 calories. Try the Asian Sesame Chicken Salad at Panera Bread and you have cut 950 calories from that meal. There is no other way to know what you are eating than to have a book like this at your side. Is it any wonder that we as Americans are up 20 to 30 pounds on average from our relatives in the 1960's? The cards are stacked against us, or in this case, the foods.

It's because restaurants are out for the buck, and they want their food costs to be as low as possible. To do that they think about 3 words constantly. They are FATS, SALTS, and SUGARS. By utilizing the maximum amounts of these three ingredients, they can give you flavors which you desire, but not the quality and nutrients which you need, and there is no way for you to tell the difference. There are five chapters in this book. They are:

1) The New Rules of Eating Out

2) The Best and Worst Restaurant Foods in America

3) At Your Favorite Restaurant

4) Menu Decoder

5) The Captive Eater's Survival Guide

Every chapter is crammed full of fascinating information that you simply cannot be without. The pictures are extraordinarily helpful. This country spends over $500 million on health and fitness books, over $18 billion on health and clubs.... If you give another $5 billion for diet foods and weight loss concepts, you realize this is a very big business. At the same time, we are all putting on weight. It doesn't make sense.

What's going on here is we are eating foods in restaurants that are bad for us while we think they are good for us. Every one out of four meals is being eaten outside the home. There is no other explanation. The obesity rate has doubled since 1970, and this book explains why. The average male consumes 7% more calories per day than back then. The average female, you don't even want to know what she is consuming. The answer is 22% more calories than 40 years ago. We are getting fatter and fatter, because when we step out and eat out, we don't know what they are feeding us. This book will tell us.

If you SUPERSIZE IT, you are SUPERSIZING your belly. Some restaurants offer to more than double the size of your soda by adding a few cents to the bill. How do you say no to that? In essence, what you are really doing is buying calories, and putting them right into your waistline. Gaining or losing weight is really simply a matter of calories in versus calories out, adjusted for your physical activity level for the day.

If you accumulate an extra 3500 calories beyond what you need, boom you have added a pound of weight to your body. It also means if you eat something out and it's got 1300 calories in it and you think it's got 300, it only takes 3 meals like that to add a pound to your body. It's EASY TO GAIN WEIGHT. You don't even have to work at it.

The Restaurant Survival Guide gives you 100's of pages of pictures of foods in different restaurants, all of which you will know. It then tells you which foods to eat and which to avoid, and it pulls no punches about it. The names of the restaurants are there, and the specific meals are told to you in detail. Go to the Cheese Cake Factory and order the kids' pasta with Alfredo Sauce and you are looking at 1803 calories, which is absolutely outrageous. The same meal at Fezoli's and its 290 calories. Just one more example to make the case. You can walk into Starbuck's and order an Espresso Frappuccino blended (Venti) and its 290 calories. A Dunkin' Donuts frozen cappuccino with skim milk is 550 calories. You simply cannot give away that kind of calorie count without knowing. The results are too consequential.

CONCLUSION

I loved this book. It was just real easy to absorb the knowledge and the lessons. This book is part of a series and they are all outstanding additions to anybody's search for dietary knowledge and salvation. Yes, there is hope out there, but the odds are against you as the consumer. Manufacturers are allowed to lie, and print false advertising on products. Restaurants are not posting calorie counts on their menus that are truly helpful. The power lies with us to change things, and so it is up to you, and thank you for reading this review.

Richard C. Stoyeck Read more ›

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting book February 24, 2010

By Lillian Kennell

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I found this book interesting. Foods I thought would be good to eat were on the "do not eat list" and foods I usually avoided were really much better to eat. It changes your mind on which restaurants you should dine.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I use one every day! May 30, 2010

By Todd M. Bray

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this for the office, and the yellow one for home. I consult one or the other every day. I have lost forty pounds in the last four months and am losing every week. It just helps me not get ambushed by things that I considered good for me,but were loaded with fat and calories. I haven't had to change my lifestyle. When the lunch order is being taken, I whip out my book and make the best decision available.