Is it possible to choose low calorie Mexican food in American-style Mexican restaurants? Not easily. Watching your calorie intake means steering clear of the oversized portions of fried foods smoothered with cheese and sour cream. Traditional Mexican food was nothing like this.

Traditional Mexican food featured high fiber complex carbohydrates with lots of vegetables and fresh flavor. Common foods included beans, corn, squash, tomatoes, avocado, peanuts, potatoes, and turkey. It wasn’t till the Spaniards arrived in the 1500s that wheat, pork, beef, and chicken were added to the traditional diet. The Spaniards were also responsible for introducing the concept of frying.

Even today, fried foods such as burritos, deep-fried tacos, and flautas are known in Mexico as “northern cuisine”. This refers to the region of Mexico that borders the United States.

No matter how healthy and lower calorie the original Mexican diet may have been it is difficult to find low calorie Mexican food in the United States. Most of the food served in American-style Mexican restaurants has been modified to suit American tastes.

What to keep in Mind

Traditional Mexican tortilla preparation called for steaming or grilling not frying. Whenever possible look for baked, grilled, and soft tortillas on the menu. Choose soft tacos, baked quesadillas, and salsa as a sauce or dip.

Salsa made with fresh tomatoes and other vegetables, whether a commercial variety or homemade, is almost always a low calorie choice. The tricky part is figuring out how to skip the chips that get served with the salsa. Your best bet may be to ask your server to not set any out on the table. But your eating partners won’t be happy with that!

Other words that may alert you to dishes to avoid include crispy, fried, and covered with cheese or sour cream. Watch out for large portion sizes, refried beans, and chimichangas. Desserts are often fried so choose instead to skip dessert or have a piece of fruit when you get home.

Some possible substitutions you might make include:

Chicken fajitas (marinated chicken grilled with onions, green peppers, lettuce, diced tomatoes with a soft corn tortilla) instead of quesadillas

Grilled shrimp instead of nachos

Chicken enchiladas with salsa instead of flautas, chimichangas, or burritos covered with cheese

Grilled fish or chicken instead of carnitas (fried beef or pork) or chorizo (sausage)

Decide what to order before you leave for the restaurant

Your best choice for keeping track of your calorie count when eating Mexican is to check menu choices online before you head out to eat. No matter what guidelines you may be given the calorie counts for any given menu item will vary considerably depending on the restaurant and method of preparation. One of my favorite calorie count sites for getting a quick overview of the calories in various restaurant meals is Calorie Lab. (For more calorie count sites see my previously posted article, Calorie Counts and Nutrients: Best Sites Online )

Finding low calorie meals is difficult. You might decide to pick a higher calorie meal that you will split with someone else or box up half to bring home before you even start eating.

Here’s a few lower calorie Mexican restaurant choices I found with a quick search:

The Acapulco Restaurant y Cantina offers a Halibut Filet with Salsa Tomatillo (a light and flaky grilled Alaskan halibut filet) served with fresh vegetables and rice for 420 calories.

Baja Fresh Mexican Grill has a “Bare Burrito” (charbroiled chicken, grilled peppers, chilies and onions, fresh chopped cilantro, Pico de Gallo and salsa served on rice with fresh black or pinto beans) for 640 calories. Split with someone else or choose to save ½ to 1/3 to take home.

Daddios Italian and Mexican Take & Bake has a Chicken Mexican Salad (salad mix, chicken or beef, tomatoes, black olives, onions, cheese, tortilla chips) for 392 calories (one small salad).

Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill found mostly in California seems to offer a variety of Corn Tortillas and Tacos with fish and chicken for less than 350 calories each.

Making Mexican at Home

A great way to satisfy your desire for Mexican food without all the calories is to make it yourself at home! I found an informative YouTube video on how to prepare the ingredients for low calorie chicken fajitas in quantity. Enjoy!

For more information on watching your calorie count when eating out you may want to read some of my other articles.

1.Easy Ways to Cut Calories with Restaurant Meals

2. A Low Calorie Restaurant Food Guide

3. Low Calorie Chinese Meals: Restaurant or Takeout

4. Low Calorie Italian Food: What to Choose at an Italian Restaurant

As always, have a great week, watch those calories, and stay healthy!

I encourage you to take a moment and see what’s new at the Women and Weight Website. I’ve spent quite a bit of time setting up what I hope will be a couple of useful links for you. There’s now a link on the menu bar at the top of each page that gives you easy access to some of my most read and popular articles. And there’s another link for you to have easy access to a variety of health tools.

ARTICLES

Just look for “Articles” on the navigation bar. Some of my best articles were hard to find before I added this link. If you are a new visitor to my site or an RSS feed subscriber and you haven’t stopped by for a while, I’m confident you will find many articles that you might have missed. As we head into the holiday season, you may want to be as well-prepared as possible to make healthy choices, not put on extra pounds, and yet still enjoy the holiday season.

If you have not yet had a chance to read one of my first articles I posted on this site, you may want to do it now. Its title is Weight Loss Success: A Nutritionist’s 10 Best Tips. I may have written this a while ago but the tips are still valid. Read this article and it will help you stay on track with making the best choices you can when you reach for food during the holidays.

Are you remembering to include good sources of dietary fiber in your diet each day? Have you read Dietary Fiber: Can it Help You with Weight Loss? Do you know which are the best low calorie, high fiber fruits and vegetables for this time of year? You may want to read Fall Fruits and Vegetables: Low Calorie and High Fiber. I will be sharing a new version for the best winter fruits and vegetables soon. Be looking for that!

I have articles listed under 8 different categories from Calories to Reviews of programs and services to Weight Loss and Exercise Tips and more. I’ve written dozens of articles. If you are not finding the information you need, let me know! I’m always creating new lists of what to write about and share.

The holiday season may mean eating out more often. Have you read my tips on how to keep your calorie count down when eating out? Maybe you’d like specific tips on saving calories when eating at a Chinese or Italian restaurant. Be looking for more tips about other ethnic restaurants in the coming months!

HEALTH TOOLS

Something else I’ve added to the navigation bar that I think you will find to be useful is a link to a variety of health calculators and other tools. If you want to determine your BMR to get a handle on how many calories you need you will find it here. You’ll also find calculators for assessing calories burned and how much you need with respect to protein, fat, and carbohydrates each day.

ENJOY

No, I haven’t added a link for Enjoy though maybe I should! I simply want to encourage you to ease up on your weight loss goals for the next 5 or 6 weeks. Maintaining weight might be a better goal than losing weight. You can start off fresh on January 1, 2008 with calorie cutting. Till then enjoy the holidays and indulge just a little…