Written By Courtney McMahan, RD

Because of their use of whole-food, fresh ingredients, Chipotle is one of the healthier fast food restaurants. However, it’s still easy to get a meal that will total more than half your daily calories if you opt for something like a burrito or nachos. Here are five steps to building a healthy meal at Chipotle:

Opt for a bowl

Choosing a bowl at Chipotle is one of the easiest ways to still get all the flavors of a burrito, but massively cut down on the calories. A burrito loaded with beef, rice, cheese, guac, and sour cream can easily rack up well over 1,000 calories. The 13 inch tortilla alone is right around 300 calories, and a 4 oz serving of chips is nearly 600 calories. A salad bowl can be just as filling as a burrito or nachos but with more nutrients and less than half the calories. 

Make veggies the base

Instead of filling the bottom of your bowl with rice, which could be up to three servings, choose lettuce or spinach to up the fiber and save 300 to 400 calories. For an added nutrient and fiber boost, you can also add the fajita veggies (sauteed peppers and onions).

Pick your protein

There is only about a 50 calorie difference between the lowest calorie and highest calorie option in this category, so you don’t need to be too selective. Just go ahead and choose your favorite. Every option in this category will give you 20 to 30 grams of protein per serving. And, if you are extra hungry or low on protein for the day, you can even double up on the protein. 

Don’t overload on fats

Concentrated fats are one of the easiest ways to rack up extra calories, so go light on them and just choose one or two for topping your bowl. Adding shredded cheese, guacamole, vinaigrette dressing, and sour cream to your bowl can add over 700 calories, so just pick your favorite fat. Alternatively, you could choose two options and just ask them to half the serving size of each. 

Choose the sides and toppings carefully

Salsa is a great low-calorie topping, but their fresh tomato salsa has a whopping 550 mg of sodium per serving; the green chili salsa is still very low calorie but only has 260 mg of sodium. As mentioned before, an order of their chips is very calorie dense. This doesn’t mean you can never have chips, just split them with a friend or portion out a few and save the rest for later. And as with the fat, think about the number of carb servings in your meal.