Reduce fast food

[Mahalak]

At present it isn't likely I'm giving up fast food altogether in one move. What suggestions do folks have for reasonable challenge goals regarding fast food reduction?

• Once a week?
• Make healthier choices (somewhat hard to gauge, but possible in a general way)
• ?

 

It would be nice if I could just say, "I'm done with it!" But it would also be nice to run a marathon tomorrow or benchpress my weight. Not too likely! But I can work toward it.

[pureleeawesome]

How much fast food are you eating a week and what do you define as fast food?

One of my goals this challenge was to only buy lunch once a week and bring homemade every other time. It's worked for me but in the future I'll change that one lunch to be - one lunch where I just buy a sandwich/whatever instead of getting cookies or cake as well.

So my preference (which may not work for you) would be to start dropping intake. Depending on how much you eat now though, only once a week may be too much of a change.

[mom2sjm]

Three things that helped me cut down on fast food:

 

1.  no drive thru.  must park, go in and eat.

2.  select healthier venues.  subway, chipotle, panera bread.  all serve the food fast and choices are better than "a healthy choice" from McDonalds and the rest.

3.  no sodas with fast food.  water.  this was a biggie because I found that the soda was what was pulling me into the fast food joints 1-2x a day!!

 

I went from a 1-2 daily visits down to 2-3 times a week with these rules.  Hope that helps.

[Mekong]

I don't know if this is feasible, but for my schedule trying to reduce the number of impromptu trips would be pretty effective. I know there are days that I won't be able to eat if I don't allow myself buying food, but I can plan those things, e.g. "My options will be these places, I will eat one of these things, I will eat these things for my other meals to balance it out."

Going out to eat last minute usually gets me in trouble nutritionally, motivationally, and then it's a snowball effect of not cooking, no leftovers for lunch so eating out again, since I have to get something for lunch may as well get breakfast too, crappy food makes me too lethargic to make dinner again.....

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[mom2sjm]

On 4/28/2016 at 5:37 PM, sshussett25 said:

At present it isn't likely I'm giving up fast food altogether in one move. What suggestions do folks have for reasonable challenge goals regarding fast food reduction?

• Once a week?
• Make healthier choices (somewhat hard to gauge, but possible in a general way)
• ?

 

It would be nice if I could just say, "I'm done with it!" But it would also be nice to run a marathon tomorrow or benchpress my weight. Not too likely! But I can work toward it.

 

It's been a month since you posted your question.  How is it going?  Still working towards cutting down the fast food?

[Mahalak]

Thank you for asking! I've been kind of slack in reporting in to NF lately, though I've been fighting the good fight. 

I have cut back quite a bit on the fast food. Down to once or twice a week.

It has been helpful to differentiate between "eating out" and "fast food," as I've kind of lumped them together, unfairly. 

When it comes to fast food/chains/drive through, the numbers are really down. The temptation is still there, but acting on it is less. 

When I changed jobs a year ago, I left a lot of day to day travel to meet people. That has helped.

Decreasing the soda is something I've been working on, with some success. What I've found to happen a lot lately is that instead of draining one cup and getting a whole refill, I'm only filling an inch or two from the top. So that is an improvement.

 

[Igaduma]

Every time I read about people eating out all the time, I'm like "I wish I could afford to eat out every day". 

 

Cutting down on sugar mixed with a little water has made/is making a huge difference for me.  And I didn't even drink that many soda's to begin with, so I can only imagine what the benifit of dropping them would be for someone who drinks a lot of them.

 

Each time you drink one, don't write down how many calories it is.  That's just a number.  Write down how long you have to run to burn that back off.  That makes it more "real".

[Juni0r83]

On 5 June 2016 at 3:39 AM, sshussett25 said:

Thank you for asking! I've been kind of slack in reporting in to NF lately, though I've been fighting the good fight. 

I have cut back quite a bit on the fast food. Down to once or twice a week.

It has been helpful to differentiate between "eating out" and "fast food," as I've kind of lumped them together, unfairly. 

When it comes to fast food/chains/drive through, the numbers are really down. The temptation is still there, but acting on it is less. 

When I changed jobs a year ago, I left a lot of day to day travel to meet people. That has helped.

Decreasing the soda is something I've been working on, with some success. What I've found to happen a lot lately is that instead of draining one cup and getting a whole refill, I'm only filling an inch or two from the top. So that is an improvement.

 

Maxx Chewning on YouTube had a good suggestion for dealing with the sofa craving while eating out. He said what worked for him (apparently be used to drink a lot of soda) was to drink water with the meal, and then before you throw the cup out at the end, just get a quick squirt of soda to give yourself that little taste. And for him that was apparently enough.

 

Don't know if this will help for you, but I found the idea interesting.

[Boba Fett?!]

On 4/30/2016 at 10:55 PM, mom2sjm said:

Three things that helped me cut down on fast food:

 

1.  no drive thru.  must park, go in and eat.

 

I friggin love that!  Make it a challenge!  I LOVE McDonalds, but is it worth getting out of my car?  Hell no.

 

I think one of the biggest inspirations for weight loss is Kevin Smith.  He went from getting kicked off a plane for being too fat....to yelling at Southwest Airlines about it....to taking action for his being too fat.  There's a million ways he could have went about losing weight, but the important part is that he took a catalyst and said, "You know what?  I'm fat and need to fix this"

 

Wanting to reduce your fast food intake is a huge deal!  It's an amazing decision.  It's seriously almost as important as cutting it out all together.  

 

Start small.  No drive thru.  One less cheeseburger.  Fast food only on the weekdays.  Fast food only on the weekends instead.  Slowly build your willpower muscle.  Reward yourself, with a movie or something you've felt guilty about doing before.....keep building that muscle....it'll snowball.  Eventually you'll feel so great about your decision, and health, that fast food is gone completely.  

 

Best of luck mate!