I met a couple of friends at a national-chain pizza place for dinner last night. Since I’ve only just started trying to cut out carbs this week . . . and since I’d had a major carb craving at work earlier in the day, I knew I couldn’t trust myself to eat pizza with moderation. So, instead, before I went, I checked out the nutritional page on the company’s website for the one item I knew I could probably get away with eating without adding a whole lot of carbs: WINGS.

I love Buffalo wings—I came to love and rely on them as a go-to when eating out the first time I lived the low-carb lifestyle. But you have to be careful when ordering these out and, if possible, check the restaurant’s nutritional info before going to make sure you aren’t unknowingly sabotaging yourself when ordering them.

If I hadn’t done this, I would have ended up ordering something that would have cost me 32 grams of carbs—almost my daily limit of 40 for one meal! But because I planned ahead, I got away with just 14 grams instead—and a very tasty meal!

Surviving Pizza Hut

1 order of 16 Garlic Parmesan Traditional Wings (bone-in, not breaded)
1/4 cup Texas Pete Buffalo Wing Sauce

Yes, I smuggled in a container of my own wing sauce. The wings cost me the same amount to purchase as those prepared with PH’s sauce, so they didn’t lose any money

Wings: 8g carbs
Sauce: 6g net carbs
Total: 14g net carbs

Obviously, if you add blue cheese or ranch dressing to this as a dipping sauce, it will add a few more carbs. You can also, apparently, order the wings “naked” and save yourself those additional carbs, as well. But the garlic-parm seasoning on the wings added a layer of flavor that the regular buffalo wings don’t have, so it was well worth fitting those 8 carbs into my meal plan for the day.