solutions for fast food

Fast food is a tasty and convenient usually cheap and it’s also kind of terrible for us. Each mouthful carries with it a lot of calories, fat and sodium and reasons why it’s best to minimize your trips through the standard drive thru.

Grilled red meat- Italy gave the world pasta and Mexico gave us tacos. The American it might as well be our national dish. We like nit so much we think two patties are better than one, and then we add cheese, bacon and mayonnaise to really make it something special. The bad news is that red meat brings with it saturated fat and cholesterol which have been implicated in heart disease.

Exercise and results related on an inverted U-shaped dose –response curve. As the amount of exercise your doses increase so do the results up to a point. Past that plateau further increases lead to decreased performance. The sweet spot is in the middle of the curve where the dose maximizes the result. Doing too little by clinging to the absolute minimum short changes results as much as over-training you need to up dose for the best. 

Order grilled chicken sandwiches, baked potatoes without cheese and sour, salads with vinaigrette rather than ranch dressing and fruits parfaits. Skip mayonnaise and special sauces, ask for the junior size and always say no to combo deals. Avoid sugary calorie laden sodas; super size sodas can pack 1,500 calories in a cup more than half the recommended daily calories.

Sweet sips the usual item to round out this tasty trio is either a soda or a milkshake. The ever growing cups of refreshing liquid mean lots of added calories but virtually no nutrition. The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of 6 teaspoons of sugar a day for women and nine for men. A 30 ounce large soda has 18 teaspoons and it’s all added sugar.

But what else is there to wash down the salty, fatty meal on the go or order unsweetened iced tea or water instead  or bring a favorite non-soda, on ice cream beverage from home.