Healthy Eating Out: Qdoba Mexican Grill

What I ended up with. Yum!

Going out to eat can come with a lot of caveats when you are paying attention to what you use to fuel your body. I don't go out to eat nearly as often as I used to and a primary reason for that is because I simply will not eat a lot of what I used to. I thought it would be helpful if I used my experiences dining out and trying to make the experience as healthy as possible and posted them up here to help others out. I know that sometimes I find myself googling "Healthy ________ options" and when nothing comes up it can be frustrating. So by testing some different restaurants and options, I'm hoping to come up with some healthy fare.

My first stop is Qdoba Mexican Grill. I had only been here once before and had remembered enjoying it. I looked up the menu beforehand on their website, and they even had a nutrition calculator available, which made figuring out what I wanted even easier. 

My order was a Naked Grilled Vegetable Burrito, the term "naked" means without a flour tortilla. It had the vegetables, cilantro lime rice, pinto beans, guacamole, pico de gallo, and lettuce. When I was ordering I didn't realize that they automatically gave you a scoop of rice, or else I probably would have asked for half the amount seeing as they gave me quite a bit. 

Overall I found it really enjoyable and flavorful. I did not miss anything by not having a tortilla wrapped around it. I was very hungry and I ate all of it, but I was very full afterward so I could even see having leftovers from something like this. The only thing that I didn't entirely like about it was the rice. I thought it was more salty than I am used to. If I were to go back I would definitely ask for less rice. 

The nutrition information for what I ordered was about 550 calories, 20g fat, 75g carbs, 13g protein, 15g fiber, 1400mg sodium. When I first saw how high the sodium, carbs and fat were I was not very happy. However, the main culprit in this seems to be the rice. If you take away the rice you cut down the fat down to 15g, carbs to 35g, and sodium to about 800mg. Which is a lot more reasonable for a grab-and-go meal.

A slightly weird looking picture of me mid-bite.

Have you ever eaten at Qdoba? What would you order?