Weight Loss

I went to O'Charley's today for lunch with friends, and ordered the O'riginal Southern Fried Chicken salad. I ordered the light honey mustard dressing on the side. Now I understand fried food is bad, but there were probably 3 tenders MAX in this salad. Plus their salad with grilled chicken instead (the cajun chicken salad) is 740 calories, so apparently the fried chicken is less fattening than the grilled???  Anyways, the rest of my fried chicken salad was nothing but fresh veggies (mushrooms, tomatoes, lettuce, and a little shredded cheese). There were no croutons, no bacon, no egg. But their web site says it's 720 calories? How could that be when a plate of their chicken tenders (which is about 6 tenders) is 850 calories? I didn't even eat all the salad, but i did eat all the chicken out. I had no idea this would be so high in calories and it toally blew my day. I'm over already on calories and I haven't even eaten dinner.

Here's a link to their nutritional page: http://www.ocharleys.com/nutrition/

Thoughts????

How much of the dressing did you use? I'm assuming the calorie count takes into account ALL the dressing that would come on the salad if you didn't order it on the side.

I hope that's right, because it usually comes with the regular honey mustard dressing and I ordered the light, which would be fewer calories. I used about half the light dressing I ordered.

The O'Charley's lite that I have here at the house is not the same that they use at the restaurant (don't ask me why) but it still packs a 120cals per 2 tbps.-which is a ton in my book.

The 'lite' at the restaurant is much more caloric for some reason. 

Chalk it up to a holiday weekend and a more than likely boost to your metabolism .  Rarely do we allow anything like that in our bodies so it gets a good jolt and stimulates it for the better! 

Ok, let's pick this apart (im over-estimating the veggies because i havent seen the salad)

Salad: usually 25 calories for 1.5 cups. so it would maybe be like 40-50 calories at the most for that.

Tomatoes: they usually use cherry tomatoes : 1 cup cherry tomatoes is roughly 30 calories.

Mushrooms: 1 cup is 15 calories

a little shredded cheese was probably around 1/4 a cup, and it was probably cheddar: roughly 115 calories

The chicken my dear: would be 425 ( because 6 is 850)

The dressings: 2 TBS is 120 calories

that totals to:

using the higher end estimates is 755 calories. but that is just me trying to guess on what type/amount they used

and you said you didnt eat all the salad but did finish the chicken, and used dressing?

well then you know for sure you consumed about 500 calories at least.

my advice: stick to garden salads with extra veggies :)

Just because it is a salad doesnt mean it is always healthy. Thse more things you add on to a salad especially cheese, dressing and meat, the more the calories are going to add up. So yeah it is pretty believable that your salad was 720 calories. You probably would have been better off just having a burger without cheese and mayo.

It's the frackin' fried chicken!

Even healthy, low fat, boneless, skinless, grilled chicken breast strips are like 120 calories for 4 oz.  But as soon as you bread it and deep fry it, you more than double the calories for the same size portion (not to mention the extra saturated fat and carbs). 

Check out any restaraunt's nutrition info on their website -- if they offer both a "Grilled chicken" and a "Crispy Chicken" version of their salads, the Cripsy (read: Fried) version is like 200 cals more!

Check out this bit of trivia:  We all know that chicken is healthier for you than beef, right?  But did you know that there is less fat and calories in the average hamburger+bun than in the average cripsy chicken sandwhich?  Next time, opt for the grilled chicken!