8 smart ways to order when eating out

Whether you're treating yourself to a meal at a restaurant or ordering a take-out, the following advice will help you make the right choices for your waistline.

1. Give sweet-and-sour dishes a wide berth. These meals should be a rare treat – one portion may contain as much as eight teaspoons of sugar. That includes lemon chicken and some spicy beef dishes. Chicken with cashew nuts or peppers, stir-fried noodles and seafood dishes are all healthier, especially if you have boiled rice or noodles rather than egg fried rice.

2. Stay away from coconut milk. Some cuisines, such as Thai, use a lot of coconut milk as a base, which is high in saturated fat. You'll leave the restaurant healthier if you opt to start with a soup such as tom yum, beef or chicken satay or Thai fish cakes, and follow up with a chicken, pork or fish-based noodle dish. Thai menus often feature lots of delicious vegetarian dishes too, as well as salads.

3. Try a drier style of curry. Some of the drier Indian dishes, such as tandoori, tikka and bhuna, are usually the lower-fat options on the menu. Other healthier choices include vegetable and shellfish-based curry dishes such as sag aloo (spinach and potato) and mutter paneer (peas with cheese) and baltis. It goes without saying, avoid anything deep-fried

.4. Go for skinless chicken. Ditch the skin on a chicken thigh and you'll save 160 calories and 12 grams of fat.

5. Choose chicken, not lamb. Research showed that of nine types of takeout foods tested, a lamb kebab was the outright loser. These kebabs were found to contain far more trans fats than any other takeout meal. If you want a kebab, choose chicken instead, and pile on the salad.

6. Look for the words "grilled," "baked" or "chargrilled." If something's cooked that way, it's not fried – and you'll automatically be reaping some savings in terms of fat and calories.

7. Have an apple, banana or fat-free yogourt, or some other healthy snack an hour before you go for your meal. That way you won't arrive starving.

8. Avoid processed or cured meats. That includes hot dogs, salami and ham. These heavily processed meats are often full of fat, salt, chemical additives and, in some cases, sugar. At a deli or a sandwich shop, go for turkey breast, chicken breast or roast beef instead.