Waffle House & Me.... Can it be a healthy food choice?

My husband and my two grandchildren absolutely love to eat at the Waffle House.  Everyone has eaten at the Waffle House at least once in their life.  Or at least they should have.  This restuarant is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and 366 days if it is a leap year.   When we are driving down the road and my 3 1/2 year old grandson and 2 year old granddaughter are in the car with us, as soon as they see the yellow sign with black letters they begin to scream in unison, "Waffles House" !!  "Waffles House"!! And no this is not a mis-type, they add the "s" to the Waffle when crying out the name of this now favorite place to dine.

Before I began "My Journey To A New Me" I never really gave much thought to how many calories were in anything that I would order at this resturant. I had my favorite meal that I would order regardless of what time of the day that I chose to dine there.  Two eggs scrambled with cheese, a bowl of cheese grits and wheat toastwith strawberry jelly.  I never ordered meat, not because I am a vegetarian, but because I figured I needed to cut something out to keep from being to large to fit in the booth. 

When our order would arrive, I would always ask the server for two strawberry jelly packs for my toast because it always seemed like I would get the mixed fruit and I just don't like the mixed fruit.  Any way,  using my new app on my iphone to look up my calories, http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ , I checked out Waffle House and it was in there along with many of the menu items that they offer.  Did you know that 2 Eggs, Hashbrowns & Buttered Toast are 770 calories!!! Oh say it ain't so!!! This is crazy!! This would be over half of my allotment of 1400 calories for the day!! It would probably be a good idea to order a bowl of grits instead of the hashbrowns and ask them to hold the butter on my toast.  But 770 calories, you've got to be kidding me.

There had to be a way besides cutting out the butter to save some calories and feel like I had more to eat besides the napkin (just kidding).  I then looked at the food items that I wanted in my handy website mentioned above and found a single egg was 70 calories.  Okay I could start with that, but one egg did not sound too appetizing or filling, so I looked up egg "whites" and found they had 16 calories.  Wow that is a big savings on my calorie count!  I decided to order 1 whole egg and 2 egg whites but I still wanted the cheese so I asked the server if their cheese was grated or sliced, and she said sliced.  The sliced cheese was another 70 calories, so now my cheese eggs were up to 172 calories.  I asked the server to use cooking spray instead of oil and serve my grits plain with no butter. 

The bowl of grits were my big splurge at 200 calories, but I ate them slowly and found that when I was about half way through the bowl I was satisfied, so I stopped eating.  My wheat toast was served dry (70 calories per slice) so I asked for two packs of strawberry jelly (approx. 50 calories) to complete my meal. 

I believe that the eggs were the lightest and fluffiest scrambled eggs that I have ever eaten.  I enjoyed every mouthful.  The dry toast was pretty dry, but the strawberry jelly felt like I was cheating, and the bowl of grits were filling and satisfying.  The only thing that could have made the grits better would be another slice of cheese, but hey let's not get crazy!!!  My total calorie count for this delicious and satisfying meal at the "Waffles House" was only 562 calories, but Wait!!  I just remembered that I only ate half the bowl of grits, so I cut this meal down to 462 calories!! That's right folks, 462 calories!! Can you believe it?  I was very excited, and knew that if I kept track of my food intake that even dining in places like "Waffles House" could be accomplished on My Journey To A New Me!!! 

I am only now in the beginning stages of this adventure but with each day I learn new things about myself, the food choices that I make, and how to be a healthier me.  And that is why I started this journey in the first place!!