By Stephen Lau and editing by Stacey Sexton

Tuesday Jan 10, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) -- Many people believe that eating out frequently disturbs weight loss plans because restaurant food has more calories, and we tend to order tasty, highly-caloric foods when they’re available.

However, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin said that individuals can eat out and still lose weight.

The study that led researchers to say this appears in the January/February 2012 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. It was conducted on 35 healthy, perimenopausal women from 40-59 years old. The women participated in a program—Mindful Restaurant Eating, which lasted for 6 weeks.

The program, aimed to help people avoid gaining weight, taught participants the skills needed to reduce caloric and fat intake when eating out.

The scientists found that participants had lost more weight, had lower average daily caloric and fat intake, and had fewer barriers to weight management when eating out after the program.

"Although the intention of the intervention was weight maintenance and the majority of participants were not dieting with the intent to lose weight at the start of the study (69%), on average the intervention group lost 1.7 kg during 6 weeks. The number of times that participants ate out, as captured in the 3-day 24-hour recalls, did not significantly decrease from time 1 to time 2, indicating that participants were able to successfully manage their weight while continuing their usual, frequent eating-out patterns," said Dr. Gayle M. Timmerman, PhD, lead author of the study.

“Overall, the participants in the intervention group reduced their daily caloric intake by about 297 calories after completing the intervention, which would explain their weight loss. Only part of the calorie reduction (about 124 calories) can be accounted for during eating out, indicating that fewer calories were also consumed at home.”

This study indicated that the importance of developing an eating skill could be one useful solution to prevent weight gain.

"Based on what we learned from this study, for those individuals who eat out frequently, developing the skills needed to eat out without gaining weight from the excess calories typically consumed at restaurants may be essential to long-term health," Dr. Timmerman concludes.

According to the Centers for Disease and Control, about one-third of U.S. adults are obese.  It is estimated that medical costs associated with obesity were $147 billion last year.  Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer.