Being a Restaurant Junkie, Part I

I've gotten used to eating out for most of my meals. It's not that we can't cook, or not even that we don't like to cook. It's more of a time/convenience issue. After getting up for work at 6:30a.m. (or earlier) and not getting home until close to 6p.m., I often don't feel like getting something ready, cooking it, and (here comes the really hard part) cleaning up.

We'll start with some good intentions and cook a meal or two, but then the kitchen gets messy and we run out of some key ingredient and then it's like, "Let's go out to eat."

Before starting the plan, we went out enough that it was starting to get a little tiresome. Not so much for a lack of restaurants, but actually in the Orlando area, EVERYONE likes to go out to eat. So most restaurants have waits each day, and on the weekend those wait times get into the hour-plus leagues. Having a small child, waiting for an hour whilst entertaining a toddler isn't really my idea of fun. So we've had to go places that not only were tasty, but not so popular that we could just walk in on a Thursday or (really hard) Friday.

Well, now the plan has tipped that paradigm on its side. Now the prime concern is finding a restaurant that I can figure out the points values for the stupid food. I don't yet feel comfortable going into any restaurant and finding a healthy food and eating half of it. I still need the safety net of a general points value and knowing I can finish my meal. I'm not a pro just yet.

I think our choices have been cut by nearly two-thirds. It's UNBELIEVABLE to realize how many restaurants don't publish their nutritional information. Why is that so hard? I'm not looking for food options so much as I just want to know what's what so I can make the choices myself. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to Chili's for the fifth time this week! ;-)