You can still eat out and lose weight, scientists say

Scientists have come up with a programme that explains how to lose weight to people who frequently dine at restaurants.

People do not need to stop visiting restaurants in order to lose weight, they just need to change their dining habits, according to the study, which is to be published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

Researchers studied 35 healthy women between the ages of 40 and 59, who regularly ate out, putting half of them on an intervention programme and leaving the other half to their own devices.

Participants taking part in the programme were told to ask for half of their meal to be boxed up "to go" before starting to eat when in a restaurant, and to also look up calorific information on the websites of the places they were going to eat.

Those who followed the programme lost significantly more weight during the six weeks of the study, eating fewer calories and less fat every day and had fewer barriers to weight management when eating out.

Will you be following the experts' advice?