It’s not just fast food though, and in fact those have better options than many other places. At least fast food restaurants usually have a dollar menu or something with relatively small portions.
My family doesn’t like fast food so we usually go to the sit-down restaurants with waitstaff. I always have a tough time picking from the menu and wonder if maybe I should just order from their kids’ menu. Sometimes I just get soup or an appetizer. The entrees typically focus entirely around meat and include enough of that to feed a village for a week. Veggies and grains are just a tacked-on afterthought. It’s rare that I can eat half a meal. As options, they may have a wilted salad, or a healthy pile of unappetizing quinoa and kale with crunchy bits in it, but nothing else that’s not meat-centric. (I’m not vegetarian, I just think we tend to eat way too much meat and would be better off eating it a few times a week than a few times a day.)
At least in Chinese and Japanese restaurants you can get tofu dishes, egg drop soup, and things like sushi or mixed appetizers in relatively small portions. Those have become my go-to favorites for restaurant meals.
My increasing dissatisfaction with restaurants and pre-pack food (can’t stand TV dinners anymore) has driven me to spend more time learning to cook. There are plenty of good, delicious ways to make meals that are filling on a reasonable-sized portion, have a good mix of grains, vegetables, fruits, proteins, and fats, and only (optionally) need reasonable amounts of meat a few times a week. They’re just not advertised or sold directly, you have to make it yourself. And be used to the idea that fresh food has a much shorter shelf life than we’re used to, so some days may be primarily canned and dried things mixed up with spices.
Making a batch now, homemade, greek-style, plain, no sugar added. Very different from the American-style candied yogurt snacks. Yogurt itself isn’t the problem, it’s that it’s marketed to taste good to kids but sound healthy to moms. People from other countries always complain when they try American yogurt that it’s wrong and too much like candy.
This is true (my wife has one of those counter apps). But once you’ve found good serving sizes and a balanced mix of things that fits your diet, it should get easier. They focus on the details, but should be helping you learn to recognize the bigger picture so that eventually you don’t need to count the details.
