While fast food is not known for its nutritional value, dining on fast food frequently does not have to spell diet disaster. Many fast food restaurants offer foods that are diet friendly, allowing you to craft healthy diets off their menus. If you want to drop some weight, but require fast food to make it through your busy day-to-day life, consider how you can improve the healthiness of your fast food.
While fast food is not known for its nutritional value, dining on fast food frequently does not have to spell diet disaster. Many fast food restaurants offer foods that are diet friendly, allowing you to craft healthy diets off their menus. If you want to drop some weight, but require fast food to make it through your busy day-to-day life, consider how you can improve the healthiness of your fast food.
Dangers of Fast Food
The fried, greasy foods that often grace fast food menus are far from diet friendly. These options, however, are easy to avoid. One of the larger, and less obvious, dangers you face when eating fast food regularly is portion size, reports the June 29, 2009, issue of "Time" magazine. Many larger fast food sizes contain two or even three servings of food. When you order these sizes, you may be failing to consider that you are actually eating twice the amount of food you really need, leading to weight gain and appetite increase.
Fast Food Nutrition Information
In 2010, healthy fast food eating became a bit easier. Hidden inside the health care bill, signed by President Barack Obama, was a line item requiring that restaurants provide the calorie and fat contents of their food offerings on both drive-thru and in-store menus. This information makes it easier for you to weigh your options and more difficult for you to remain blissfully ignorant of the calorie and fat content.
Healthy Fast Foods
As a general rule, fried foods are some of the worst fast food menu options for health conscious consumers to select. You should look for lean proteins, such as grilled chicken, on fast food menus. Baked vegetables, such as baked potatoes, or fruit sides, such as sliced apples, are also nutritious choices. Additionally, most fast food restaurants offer side or entree-sized salads. While some loaded salads are not as nutritious as you may initially think, many light-dressing or veggie-heavy salads are actually quite healthy and prove a guilt-free fast food side for you to select.
The Splurge
While skipping fried and high-fat foods all together is the best choice, it is fine to splurge from time to time. When electing to order a normally avoided food, you can decrease the negatives effects of your decision by ordering a small size. For example, snacking on a small order of fries isn't nearly as bad as cuddling up with an extra-jumbo bucket. You should also carefully consider the frequency with which you splurge, and try to avoid doing so more than once a week. If you allow yourself splurging without considering the frequency, you may find that you splurge far more frequently than you should.
Scheduled Fast Food
Because it is so easy to zip right on through the drive-thru, many fast food fans allow their stomachs to dictate their dining schedule. Doing this is dangerous, as an assortment of factors can influence whether you feel hungry. For example, many struggling dieters allow their emotions or boredom to lead them to eat instead of necessarily waiting for their stomachs to signal meal time. To ensure that you don't over-indulge because the fast food is just so easy, set and stick to an eating schedule, just as you would were you cooking the meals yourself.
