Going Out while AIP-ing

I’ve been on the AIP diet for a bit over 6 months now. It’s become a lifestyle and I now find it very easy to eat healthy – which I never thought I’d achieve if you’d asked me a while back. Actually, if you’d see me you’d probably say I’m the most food-disciplined human being on earth. But I wasn’t always like that…..

One of the greatest struggles for me was finding a way of respecting this diet while still socializing with people, while still going out. And since none of my friends and family were on any diet when I first started, this going out thing was really challenging to do at first.

I read all these articles and all these personal opinions on groups and communities, people saying that AIP is the beginning of the end when it comes to going out and enjoying lunch or dinner with friends. But you know what? None of these opinions brought me down, in fact reading all of this made me focus all my intuition into finding a balance between my new healthy eating and keeping my social life.

I developed this 6th sense out of reading all the ingredients in the menus and identifying all those non-compliant ones to avoid. And let me tell you, it turned our pretty nice after some reintros.

To be honest, one of the most helpful reintro was THE EGGS. Yes, as we know it, eggs lay at the basis of some quite tasty recipes. And starting with a simple omelet with uncured bacon (fried in lard), I started getting more and more self-confident when visiting restaurants.

This was also great news for my friends who stopped being so stressed out when seeing me read through all those restaurant menus like I was studying philosophers of the twentieth century.

Here are some of the AIP compliant meals I love to order when going out:

• Raw veggie salad had been one of my first saviors and especially now, after I reintroduced tomatoes and condiments, everything seems so tasty and neat with all that olive oil soaking the veggies like in a static nature painting.
• Grilled pork, beef and chicken – grilled food reduces the risk of using any non-compliant oil, especially if you mention this to the waiter in advance. And after reintroducing the condiments, the grilled goodies I ate are absolutely amazing (I’m a sucker for medium-rare beef actually).
• All kinds of compliant soups, especially after reintroducing tomatoes and eggs – because here in my country these are some of the long kept secrets of soup taste.
• Veggie and mushroom sauteed sides also come in very handy – of course after verifying that they are prepared using olive oil…YUMMM
• And as for dessert, traditional ice-cream or gelato made from frozen fruit (which some restaurants serve here) is always a great choice – after checking for any added sugar in advance “biensur”.
• Fruit salad is also a winner, with the elimination of any syrups or additives like whipped cream.
• Drinks are the easiest, especially after I reintroduced coffee, which I prefer black, so no danger there. There’s also the fruit smoothie and the lemonade that I love, so I do have a lot of options here. And I’ll tell you a bit about the wine below…

Now you may ask one important question, and that is – what if any of these foods have been in contact with any non-compliant ingredients? And to be honest, I thought of that myself. But then I thought about the serious effort I’ve been doing in the past 6 months and decided to take it easy on the “”contamination” idea, as long as I’m still doing my best to comply to the allowed foods.

And I feel great!

P.S. I also reintroduced alcohol, so a glass of quality wine usually makes my day when going out. My favorite one is an Italian wine called Amarone, which has a slight bitter flavor that simply makes my papillae go crazy. Quite nice, isn’t it? 🙂