Fast Food in your Weight loss Strategy

I’ve been to the street these previous handful of weeks, and together with the way I journey it is unattainable to cook each and every meal. There’s an abundance of diners, quickly foods chains, loved ones eating places and upscale eating locations that I see daily. With all these selections, quickly foods eating places are not to the prime of my record for nutritious eating, given that they are not identified for offering nutritious bodyweight reduction alternatives. Quickly foods chains are responding to this popularity with menus that contain a lot more fruit and greens, more compact parts as well as vegetarian alternatives. Their advertising and marketing campaigns are properly funded and developed to preserve your enterprise but exactly where does quickly foods actually match into your body-weight reduction program? Let’s take a look at some prime market gamers and what they are serving up. Subway was the initial quickly foods chain to leap on the weight-loss wagon was Subway. In 1999 Jared Fogle, an unknown college student, became known as “The Subway Guy,” when he told us that eating Subway sandwiches helped him lose 245 pounds in a year- dropping from a whopping 425 pounds to a healthy 190 pounds. He tells the story of how his diet consisted of two meals per day: a turkey sub for lunch and a veggie sub for dinner. Subway’s menu offers a number of 250-500 calorie salads and subs, with nutritional information messages posted throughout the stores. McDonald’s has been modifying their menu ever since Wayne Spurlock created the Super Size Me documentary in 2004. In addition to a wider choice in salads and grilled chicken they added apple dippers and a fruit and yogurt parfait. They’re even test-marketing a smaller version of the Big Mac in some areas. Their website has a “Nutrition and Fitness” section, and you can customize your meals to trim fat, save sodium and cut calories, as well as make use of their meal planner for people with diabetes. Burger King has dished up some creative food, and is one of the first fast-food giants to offer a vegetarian option with their BK Veggie Burger. Without cheese it comes in at 420 calories, with 16 grams of fat and 2.5 grams of saturated fat. They recently added scaled-down items called BK Burger Shots and BK Breakfast Shots. Essentially they are smaller versions of Burger King’s standard burgers and breakfast sandwiches. Jack In the Box has a Healthy Dining menu. Eight in ten of these menu items have less than 500 calories and 10 grams of fat per serving, in addition to mango smoothies and fruit cups. I see in the news that they’re also testing Mini Sirloin burgers in San Diego. The fast food industry provides options with lower calories and less fat and saturated fat than it used to. That’s a great start, but while calories and fat matter a great deal when trying to lose weight it’s also important to note that maintaining a healthy body requires adequate nutrition. Unfortunately fast food menus still lack much of the nutrition that’s needed for a healthy body. Fast food salads usually use iceberg lettuce, not the darker varieties. Organic steamed or raw vegetables are non-existent. Most proteins come in the form of greasy burgers and fried chicken, rather than legumes, nuts, and fresh fish. Stripped-down white bread replaces whole grains. If our bodies become starved for nutrition this causes our brain to tell us we’re hungry. If we fill up on empty, nutrition-lacking calories we aren’t feeding our body and our brain will continue to tell us we’re hungry. This vicious cycle is partly why you can eat a whole bag of potato chips and still be hungry. Personally, I do eat at fast food restaurants once or twice a week, whether I’m on the road or not. I enjoy a McDonald’s Egg Mc Muffin (minus the meat, since I’m vegetarian). It’s around 300 calories and 5 grams of saturated fat, (which is 25% of the allowed daily amount). Sure, the American cheese isn’t the best for me and the English muffin isn’t whole grain, but I was raised on fast food and I do enjoy going like this. I also love my weekly ice cream cone there. The rest of the week I eat my sprouted grain breads, my veggies, quinoa, free-range eggs, and the like for the rest of the week. Can you lose weight in fast-food restaurants? Absolutely. Jared proved it to us and now I see that a man in Virginia has lost 80 lbs. by eating nearly every meal at McDonald’s. Our bodies are designed to survive and are highly adaptable at doing so. Whether we are dieting or not, my biggest concern is that as a nation we’ve become too dependent on fast food. If you want to lose weight and keep it off for the long run, keep your fast food meals to a minimum. Prepare fresh meals as often as you can and really feed your body. This in turn will help you lose weight.

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