The Cost of Eating Out...I bet it's not what you think it is


Eating out for the most part is more expensive than eating at home. I think for most people this is something that they inherently know. However, did you know eating out costs you in another way that you might not have really thought about? It costs you in waist line.

When it comes to cooking, restaurants spare no amount of oil, sauces, and condiments that most people don’t pay attention to. This is where the majority of the flavor comes from. Did you ever wonder why their Brussels sprouts taste so good and yours is hard to choke down. Well put about 15g of oil on that and see how much more palatable it is. Even if you pick the healthiest of things, they on average will be 50-250 calories more than when you eat at home. Let’s take the average grilled chicken breast with nothing else on it. It usually is about 250 more calories at a restaurant then if you were to cook it at home. They use butters and oils to keep it moist and succulent and this costs calories unfortunately.

With this in mind we need to start eating out less. Even with healthy choices we are still taking in more calories than we need for foods that shouldn’t be as calorie dense. I figured showing this in terms of workouts would be a good way to help someone really understand what each meal eating out costs in terms of effort. So check math’d the hell out of it below for you!!



  • We say each meal out is an average of 1500 calories (this is an average some will be less, most will probably be more)
  • We calculate each workout is worth 400 calories (this is an average as well, some people burn more some less, but this takes into account hard workouts vs ones that a little lower heart rate).


1 meal   = 4 workouts
2 meals = 8 workouts
3 meals = 12 workouts
4 meals = 16 workouts
5 meals = 20 workouts

6 meals = 24 workouts

So the calculation if you haven’t figured it out is take each meal x 4 and you’ll get how many workouts you need to do by eating out.

Hopefully you start to see the picture we are trying to paint here.

  • After asking many of our clients, a lot of people eat out about 6 times a month
  • The average person exercises 12 times a month (3/week)
  • If you look at that equation, this means that they are working out half the amount of times they need to, to lose weight. If they want to eat out this often they need to up their workouts to 24 a month or back down their workouts.


The best answer is to eat out less but justify how much you can eat out by the workouts. If you want to lose weight and you workout 12 times a month, try to only eat out 1, at max 2 times a month. If you eat out once you’ll lose weight more rapidly than if you eat out twice that month. Another option is to try and increase your workouts based on how much you eat out but I would say this becomes a losing battle after a while because you can’t make up workouts as much at the end of the month if you go on an eating out binge at the end.

Helping Mundelein and Jefferson Get Fit And Have Fun!

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