There’s a tradeoff between fitness and socializing, but you can have it both ways.

If we’re being honest, most of us aren’t into fitness for our health.

Sure, if you’re obese maybe your doctor told you to lose weight. But for the rest of us, fitness is really about looking good.

We want sixpack abs. We want a chiseled jaw. We want broad shoulders, a tight butt and a slim waist.

In short, we’re in this for the social benefits. We’re in it to look sexy, to get more dates. To look cool and win the admiration of our peers.

And that leads us to the great tragedy of fitness: our social lives have an unfortunate habit of derailing our diets and keeping us out of the gym.

There’s the game day pizza. The late night burritos. The after-work cocktails. The birthday cake.

Say it’s Friday, and you have a dinner with friends coming up later that night. Even if you don’t know exactly what you’ll be eating, you can make a few educated guesses about the nutritional content of that meal

You can almost guarantee that whatever you have for dinner will be higher in both carbs and total calories than a typical meal you’d eat at home. In all likelihood, it will also have more fat, less protein, and fewer vitamins and minerals.

The solution here is simple: make your non-social meals the opposite of that.

If you know you’re having dinner with friends, for instance, make every other meal that day high in protein and vegetables, low in fat, and almost completely devoid of carbs.

Additionally, keep the overall portion size small.

As examples: a following this strategy, a good breakfast might consist of a protein shake or a few turkey sausages, plus some spinach or carrots and celery. A good lunch might be a chicken salad, sans dressing.