The Trick To Eating #SANE at Restaurants & on Vacation

Jonathan:Hey, what’s up everybody? Jonathan Bailor and April Perry back with another SANE Show. Today we are going to talk about SANE eating outside of your house, and in multiple different contexts. Whether it’s in a restaurant, whether it’s on a cruise ship, whether or not you hook up with Elon Musk in Space X and take a trip to the moon, and what you would be doing there. But how do you SANE eat? How do you stay SANE when you don’t have access to a stove and all that other fun stuff? Does that sound helpful April?

April:This is one of my favorite topics, and one of my favorite parts about SANE because I don’t have to sit inside my house with little containers full of specially prepared food, or order it by mail and only eat certain things that fit in my microwave. I mean this is so exciting to know I can live my life, I can go anywhere in the world and I can stay SANE, which is exciting.

Jonathan:And I think it’s also a great example April, I’ve heard some questions recently of people asking, “Hey, can I go SANE while I’m pregnant?” Or, “Can I go SANE as a vegetarian?” Remember, when we’re talking about SANE eating, you can almost think about SANE eating a just Healthy 2.0. Right? There was this concept of healthy that we were given in the 1950s, and there were telephones that we had in the 1950s. Just like we don’t use the same telephones that we used in the 1950s, we don’t use the same concept, or we shouldn’t be using the same concept of what’s healthy for us that we did in the 1950s because we’ve made so much progress.

So is this sanity healthy for anyone? Yes. Yes. Eating healthy is good for everyone, and it’s also something we can do in all contexts. We can make saner choices. So on example that I love to highlight because it takes place in a context that most people think you are doomed to gain weight. So if you can be SANE in this context then that is the ultimate test for sanity, is going on cruises. Because a cruise ship is thought of as – there’s actually statistics you can look up online of the average weight gain when someone takes a cruise. Does that sound familiar April?

April:Oh, all of my friends say, “I’m about to go on a cruise so I’m not going to eat for a month and I’m going to lose ten pounds so I can come back the same.”

Jonathan:So that is exactly the same experience that I’ve had April. In fact, the irony is that my wife and I, we take one vacation together per year. All of our other vacations involve family or business, but our one vacation together per year is on a cruise. Most people are like oh my goodness that seems crazy because you must gain a lot of weight. In fact, my wife and I, when we go on a cruise, the reason we love it is because we get to eat so much. Literally, our day on a cruise ship revolves around eating. We wake up and we have breakfast. Then we usually bring a tablet computer with a bunch of movies preloaded on it. We watch a movie. Then we eat lunch. Then we usually get the early seating for dinner, so then we eat at five. Then we have second supper, what we call second supper at nine. We just dominate when we’re at the suppers and the dinners because you can order multiple dishes of all that fun stuff. So it’s like oh my goodness, Jonathan and his wife Angela must be five-hundred pounds when they leave the cruise ship, right?

April:Right!

Jonathan:No! That’s actually not the case at all.

April:I was playing devil’s advocate here. Okay.

Jonathan:Well what we do is – again remember, SANE eating, when we perceive food as medicine, because SANE foods are medicine, the idea that on a cruise ship you essentially have a smorgasbord of an abundant amount of SANE food. There’s no reason you need to gain weight. In fact, you can sometimes – both my wife and I usually exercise very, very intensely the week before we go on a cruise. Not because we’re trying to burn off calories, but because we know that we’re about to take in so much awesome nutrition that it’s a great opportunity for us to help our body recover and heal. Just like that in and of itself, I know I just said a lot of words and I said them very quickly, but how much different of a mindset is that, and how much more empowering of a mindset is that than I’m not going to eat for a month so I can go on a cruise?

April:And then while you’re eating on the cruise you’re feeling guilty the whole time because you know you’re going to have to come back home and maybe pay for it later. Now real quickly, I’ve done a couple of cruises and I did one before I was SANE and I was sick. Honestly, I ate so much that I was sick because I was trying to sample everything because it was all new and looked so good. I honestly had stomach aches for the first two days. I thought I’ve got to stop eating, I can’t even handle it.

Then I went on a cruise after I’d gone SANE and I wasn’t sick one bit. I got to enjoy – they had omelets for breakfast. I got tons of vegetables in that. I was eating – they had really nice meats. They had tons of salads and I knew exactly how to order things and our waitress was so nice. She knew that if I didn’t want dressing on the salad or I wanted things with butter, or whatever I wanted they were so nice to prepare it for me. I felt like it was just night and day between how I felt on a SANE cruise and an inSANE cruise. So yeah, it definitely works.

Jonathan:So here’s what I do. Similar to what you do on a cruise, and I’ll also make sure I don’t make this sound too good to be true, because I’ll tell you the one kind of catch, or the one problem that I’ve experienced. But let’s just go through the day, right? So wake up, like you said, so my wife will almost always have one to three, I’m not kidding, my wife can put back the SANE food. She doesn’t play around.

April:And she’s petite.

Jonathan:I know. This is the funny thing, we talk about this in another episode, but people look at my wife, they think she weighs like a hundred and ten pounds because she’s petite. But in reality, you see her in the gym, she’s deadlifting well over her body weight. She’s squatting well over her body weight. So that, “small” woman is actually packed with dense, calorie hungry, healthy, lean muscle tissue. So she actually ways, and she doesn’t mind me sharing because weight is irrelevant, like one-forty. And she’s got a lot of muscle she needs to fuel. So she can just put back those omelets.

April:Yeah.

Jonathan:But you’re not the only one. People look at her on the cruise and they’re like this food is all going to get thrown away and they don’t realize that she’s going to crush all of it, and she does.

So, she’s got her one to three omelets that are usually a blend of whole eggs of egg whites, and then lots and lots of vegetables. Generally I will have eggs as well, but what I really like to enjoy on the cruise ships is smoked salmon because I don’t usually get smoked salmon. I usually have smoked salmon on the cruise ship, get my Omega-3s up there, and of course lots of vegetables. Lunch and dinner are super simple, right? Because like you said, it’s just a smorgasbord of vegetables and proteins, and you just enjoy the heck out of that and it’s delicious.

The one catch I find is no matter how much I eat, in terms of vegetables and nutrient dense protein, at the end of the day, and this is such an interesting feeling, I will be so physically full. Like my belly, it will look like I’ve got little Jonathan coming at nine months. But on some level I’m not satisfied because I didn’t really have my SANE deserts, or my SANE sweets because while I don’t really trust even the – they usually have “sugar free” or no sugar added deserts on the cruise ship. I don’t really trust that. So I actually sometimes will bring SANE protein bars on a cruise ship, simply because I need that sweet fix to really help me feel that sense of satiety at the end of all that food.

April:I think that’s awesome. Okay, so you’ve just given us a full day how you could eat SANE on a cruise ship. I think this is going to completely revolutionize the cruise industry. They’re going to have a SANE menu, they need to get some SANE deserts on there. Exciting!

Okay, let’s talk a little bit about some other general restaurants. Let’s say someone’s saying, “I’m not going on a cruise right now. How can I eat SANEly going to my local Italian restaurant?” Shall we start there?

Jonathan:We should, but April, and we’ve got to go to the Italian restaurant. But I just remembered a story that I’ve never shared on a podcast before, which is related to a cruise but it actually involves all-inclusive resort. So some people aren’t about cruises but they do maybe head down to Mexico, or you go somewhere tropical, you go to an all-inclusive resort. Same stereotype, you have to gain a lot of weight.

Three or four years ago my wife and I went to an all-inclusive resort down in Mexico. Same reason, because we want to eat a lot of food. This was when I had really increased some of the sanity of my life and I brought – we’re in Mexico. Got my bathing suit, got everything and this is – so if you have children watching this, or listening to this, this would be a time to cover their ears. So I eat my big SANE breakfast. I eat my big SANE lunch. We eat it on the beach, I’ve got my swim trunks on that I’d worn the previous year when we went on vacation. I’m like all right, it’s ocean time, because it was day one. I take my shirt off and run into the ocean. I hit the wave and unbeknownst to me my waist had shrunk and my swim trunks go flying in the other direction. I’m under the water and I’m like, “Angela! Angela!” She had to go get my swim trunks because not only was I able to eat a lot and not gain weight, but my waist had shrunk an inch and my swimming trunks fell off.

April:That is a great story! I’m so glad Angela was there to help you out. Oh my goodness! Okay. How do I transition to Italian?

Jonathan:So, speaking of Italian – or speaking of having your pants fall off, I went to this Italian restaurant.

April:Okay, we’ll just keep going. So great story. Local Italian restaurant – now I’m cracking up. Local Italian restaurant – I actually went and ate Italian a couple nights ago with my husband. There’s a lot of pasta and a lot of bread at an Italian restaurant, and when I walk in and I look at the menu initially I’m thinking are you kidding me? How am I going to find something that’s SANE here? Thinking back to my pre-SANE life, I always felt most depressed when I got home from an Italian restaurant because I was so full of pastas and so full of all the carbs I just felt – I don’t know. I always felt so heavy.

So one thing I’ve started discovering was just they usually have some really nice chicken dishes. They usually have some really nice salads, some really good vegetable soups. Sometimes they have veal and filet mignon. They usually have some really nice meats and they actually did have zucchini and summer squash that were sautéed and were amazing. So I’ve learned that I like spaghetti squash too, which is awesome. So I found that I can usually fill up on those kinds of things. How about you?

Jonathan:Same thing April. Whether it’s Italian restaurant, or any other restaurant, there are always SANE options. Italian restaurants are not different. Like you said, whether or not it’s veal or whether or not it’s fish, there’s always going to be a nutrient dense protein, and it may come with a side of pasta, but you can always say, “Hey, can you add more” – any delicious fine cuisine restaurant is going to have delicious nutrient dense protein and delicious vegetables. So it’s just about when you look at the menu and it says “Pastas” you just skip over that section —

April:Skip that part.

Jonathan:Just skip that part. You know, if you’re at Cheesecake Factory, that’s going to be one page of a fifty-page menu. If you’re at an Italian restaurant it might be a larger percentage of the menu, but there’s still going to be a large percentage of the menu that you can enjoy in abundance. That’s what’s the secret: there really is no secret. It’s just order the dish that doesn’t have all that pasta, and if you’re at home you can make SANE substitutions where you could make zucchini noodles, or you could use spaghetti squash, and you can have “pasta” in quotations without feeling terrible and while actually healing your hormones.

April:Now tell me with salads what you do at restaurants, because when I get a salad that doesn’t have dressing on it, I don’t like it. What do you do when you’re out and you don’t have maybe a SANE homemade dressing or something like that?

Jonathan:Three things, which are really, really helpful: One is the reason that salads without dressing can be very, very tough to eat is just the sheer bitterness of raw, green leafy vegetables with nothing to cut it can be very, very non-palatable. So you need a couple things to cut that. You need something that’s acidic. That’s why a lot of people use vinegar. You can also use lemon juice. Then adding a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. Every restaurant in the world that’s worth going to will have extra virgin olive oil. So whether or not you just say, “Hey, could you bring out a little bit of the extra virgin olive oil? Could you bring me a few lemons? Could you bring me a little bit of vinegar?” and add those to your salad. That’s really going to help.

April:Okay, is that what you do and they just bring it to you on the side, or bring it?

Jonathan: Yeah, at this point I don’t mind the taste of vegetables with nothing on top of them. I like it.

April:Even a big salad, just eat it with no dressing?

Jonathan:Correct, yeah. Or lemon. Sometimes I’ll add lemon to it just because it’s delicious.

April:Okay. All right, work on that. Okay, so I think that makes eating Italian totally doable. How about Mexican restaurants because that similar thing. I used to go – the big chips and salsa, the tortillas, right? You think Mexican restaurant, you’re usually thinking tacos, enchiladas, nachos, you know all that. So what do you do when you go eat Mexican?

Jonathan:April, you said earlier that cruise lines are going to be very excited about what we’re saying. In some ways whether it’s cruise lines, whether it’s an Italian restaurant, whether it’s a Mexican restaurant, actually they’re not at all going to like what we’re saying. Because what we’re saying in a lot of ways is the stuff the restaurants use as filler, that’s incredibly high margin for them because bread, rice, pasta, sugar – go to any buffet and you will see queues all over the place to get you to eat more bread, pasta and sweets, and less nutrient dense protein and non-starchy vegetables because those former things are incredibly inexpensive, and they are “tasty” when added with a bunch of other toxic nonsense.

So like Mexican restaurant, yeah, they’re going to make it really, really easy, just like any other restaurant. Here’s free chips because they’re super, super cheap and we’re going to wrap everything in tortillas and we’re going to serve it with rice. But whether it’s an Italian restaurant, whether it’s a Mexican restaurant, just eat more of – like if you’re going to get fajitas, just eat more of the fajita and less of the tortilla. If you’re going to get something that would traditionally be served on top of rice, just ask them to bring out vegetables and serve it on top of vegetables. Like it’s always just about eating more of the stuff that’s actually delicious. I don’t know anyone that goes to a Mexican restaurant and is like man that rice that I had at that Mexican restaurant. That was the thing that made me remember that Mexican restaurant. It’s that other stuff. It’s the marinated vegetables and meats and fish that are so delicious. So just focus on that stuff.

April:Okay, so I went to a Mexican restaurant the other day and they had a – they call it pork [inaudible 0:15:38], very sweet pork. I really have loved that, but they also have grilled chicken. So you personally, do you do the grilled chicken? What do you do?

Jonathan:I think the overarching question you’re asking – this applies to example Asian restaurants as well, which is we’re going to do the nutrient dense protein, but is the sauce inSANE?

April:Yes, how much sugar is in there? I have no idea?

Jonathan:Yeah, and if you’re getting ready to get on stage in a bikini in a figure competition, then I’d really encourage you to check the macro-nutrient ratios in the sauce. But in everyday life, and to be clear some sauces are just complete garbage.

April:They’re all sugar.

Jonathan:Yeah, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, yada, yada, yada. But, what I would encourage, especially if you’re just getting started on Sanity, or if you have goals which are not so much about seeing your abs but just about not becoming diabetic and having a lot of energy, then instead of saying, “Oh my gosh, that sauce that the pork was in had so much sugar in it. I did bad.” Say, “Wow, I didn’t eat any inSANE starch. I did good.” You know, focusing on what you did well in that context.

April:Okay. Now at Mexican restaurants, a lot of times they have great guacamole. So that can be a helpful fat, right?

Jonathan:Absolutely. Avocado is a fantastic form of whole food fat.

April:Okay, so I like that. Now what about cheese though? Because I know cheese isn’t at the top of the list for SANE, and other dairy. What do you do? Do you sometimes get cheese on it? No?

Jonathan:Cheese, for me, well in general I like to see cheese and even other sources of non-nutrient dense fat, like bacon is not a nutrient dense fat. Cheese is not a nutrient dense fat. They’re not high in fiber, they’re not high in nutrients, but they can be used as seasoning very well. So like pizza is an example of an inSANE usage of cheese because 90% of the calories that you’re going to be getting from a slice of pizza is coming from the cheese. The cheese is the main source of calories. Now, contrast that to putting like a little bit of parmesan on top of something for flavor. Totally different context and clearly you’re not going to use parmesan at a Mexican restaurant. But if it’s just a little bit, almost as a garnish, that’s totally fine.

April:Okay, I think that sounds great. All right, what about Thai food? I do actually know a little bit about Thai food because we went to Thai food with Angela. So what do you typically order?

Jonathan:Whether it’s Thai food or any sort of Asian cuisine, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, to me these are some of the easiest places to go SANE at because in all honesty, it’s the sauce, and it’s the vegetables, and it’s the meat or the fish that’s the delicious part. It’s usually served over top of rice simply because that’s what we did. And in times when people had to survive on fifty cents a day, they had to eat a lot of rice because that’s the only thing available to them. You know, we have the blessing and the privilege to live in a country, and if you’re watching or listening to this podcast you have the blessing and the privilege to have access to a little bit more resources than that. So we can simply take those delicious main dishes and serve them on top of vegetables. So just get more vegetables. Just take that curry – curry’s fine. Coconut, optimal fat. Just serve it on top of vegetables.

April:Okay, and similar with Indian food, are you just not going to get non or you just won’t do the rice and you’ll just do just the main dish?

Jonathan:Just the main dish served over top of vegetables because a lot of people like to soak up that sauce. A lot of Indian restaurants will serve cauliflower, it’s a very popular vegetable served at Indian restaurants. Cauliflower is an awesome substitute for like potatoes. It soaks up sauces really well. So again, just main stuff over vegetables.

April:Well, and I found out whenever we do takeout, I love getting those little bags of frozen broccoli or frozen cauliflower, I keep a bunch of them in the freezer. And if I ever get a Thai dish or Indian dish, I can just cook up some of my frozen vegetables and have that as the base, because sometimes they don’t have it at the restaurants, or they charge way too much for it, or something like that. So that’s an easy way to do takeout as well.

Jonathan:Just real quick April, takeout is I think an excellent option because what you just said, sort of supplementing the vegetables. Being able to do that at home, like I love shredding cabbage up on a mandolin, which is like something you slice it up and just crush it. I mean it’s like you eat this giant bowl of Thai food now because that cabbage adds so much volume to it. It’s delicious.

April:Yeah, and I think that’s really doable and for someone maybe thinking seriously, you’re going to snack cabbage? I mean, I know my kids don’t necessarily get excited about it. But at we started trying it out, it’s a great idea. I loved it because I went to a luau. We got to have a family trip to Hawaii and I was so excited to be there. They had a luau and that was another place where honestly I can’t even explain the anxiety I used to feel when I went into a buffet. Because that was something my mom was always afraid of. It was like okay family, we’re walking in to a buffet. I know it’s going to be so hard for me to control myself. So everybody, let’s talk. Let’s have a pep talk. I mean, honestly buffets were the enemy. So I walked into this luau, this beautiful buffet, I remember just feeling really excited thinking oh okay. Here’s the vegetables. I mean I just built my SANE plate. I ate a lot and I was totally full, then people were getting their money’s worth at the buffet. You totally get your money at the buffet when you eat SANEly because you’re eating the most nutrient dense group. But I felt like that was awesome. So any other kind of ideas about buffet or any experience with that?

Jonathan:Angela and I have a difficult sometimes eating out, not because we’re SANE, in fact that’s not the problem at all. We’re just very cost conscious and we like to eat a lot, so we say if you want to eat a lot of SANE food and you’re super cost conscious, really the only options available to you are like Mongolian Grills or buffets. Because you just want to crush a lot of SANE food. I mean, people are like I can never go to a buffet if I’m going to live healthfully. The irony is that when you’re going SANE you will find that buffets, even like when we came to see you April, the place we went to when we left your house was like a hometown buffet, which is known as like this is where you go to get heart disease. Right? But that’s where we went because they had a wonderful salad bar, they had wonderful fish, they had wonderful nutrient dense proteins. We just enjoyed it absolutely.

April:Okay, that’s wonderful. Now tell me maybe, as we’re talking about restaurants, I think it’s exciting when people understand I can eat SANE foods pretty much anywhere that I go. What to do let’s say because there have been a couple times where I’ve gone to a restaurant or a dinner at somebody’s house, or gone somewhere where honestly they didn’t have SANE foods. Like there wasn’t any nutrient dense protein, or I’ve had a lot of times there’s no vegetables anywhere. Like nobody’s serving vegetables. What do you do? Do you just kind of eat a little bit of inSANE and just go home and eat more later? What do you do in those situations?

Jonathan:I usually give long-winded answers. I’m going to give a short answer for this one because I think it’s really easy. First, if you’re not sure if something’s going to be SANE beforehand, just eat before you go. Then when you get there, if you find that you can’t eat anything and you want to not be rude, there’s a very easy way to do that. If someone says, “Hey you’re not eating.” “Oh you know, I have a little bit of an upset stomach.” Or something, tie it back to a medical reason. Eat before you go and if someone’s like, “Why aren’t you eating?” Just say, “Hey, my stomach’s bothering me” or give some other medical excuse. And if you need to eat, take a SANE meal bar with you. Take some nuts in a baggie with you. But if you just eat before you go and you give a medical excuse you’re good.

April:Okay. Really, I feel like what’s happening nowadays, because there are so many different allergies, because there are people who are diabetic or pre-diabetic, and we talked about this in previous episodes, but I feel like people at the restaurants typically especially the restaurants where they have good management and they are really trying to attract customers, that they will work with you and they’ll do anything that you really need. So the more open you are with them, just that you’re letting them know I’m diabetic, or I really need just vegetables. I’m really trying to eat a specific way. Ask them specifically what to do. They will take good care of you and it’s just knowing what to ask. I think that’s the main thing. Like I’d never really thought to ask someone to bring me vinegar and lemons when I’m eating a salad. That’s what I’ll be doing next time when I go to a restaurant. Because when you know what to ask they’re happy to accommodate you and you give them a little extra tip or let them know how much you appreciate them. Then all of a sudden eating out is a pleasure.

Jonathan:That’s exactly right April. I think that sort of segways perfectly into our next action, which is going to be whatever context you find yourself in, whether it’s a cruise, whether it’s an all-inclusive resort, buffet, Italian, Indian, sandwich shop, Thai restaurant, or any of these places. The key is to focus on what you can enjoy in abundance, rather than like the natural human tendency to say this is what I can’t have. I mean, just focus on what you can have and double down on that, love it, and savor it, rather than thinking about what you can’t have. I think that’s so empowering.

April:Absolutely. All right. Well, I’m excited to go out to eat again. Maybe I’ll be too excited to go out to eat a lot. But so excited. Thanks Jonathan.