Restaurant Basics

Can You Eat Healthy At A Fast Food Restaurant?

You have changed your eating habits to align with your decision to live a healthy lifestyle but you find yourself with only fast food restaurants for lunch. Due to hypertension your doctor has put you on a low sodium diet but your kids keep nagging you to take them to McDonalds. After a thorough diet evaluation you have chosen a low fat diet plan to lose those extra pounds but your friends love to eat at Subway. Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? The bottom line is can you eat at fast food restaurants and still adhere to whatever diet plan you have chosen to follow?

You can definitely minimize the unhealthy impact of most fast food restaurants on your diet plan by choosing menu items that are better for you than most. But before we get into the details let’s review the basic tenants of healthy eating. Avoid foods with saturated fats and trans fatty acids, load up on fruits and vegetables, choose whole grain foods, choose foods low in cholesterol, don’t drink your calories and watch your portions.

The two healthy eating basics that you can follow to a “T” are don’t drink your calories and watch your portions. Choose either a diet soda or, better yet, ask for water. Do not supersize and select the smallest size available. There that wasn’t hard and you can apply these two basics to any fast food, or for that matter any fine dining, restaurant.

The other basic tenants require a little prior planning to satisfy effectively. Almost every fast food restaurant has nutrition information available on their website. For example if you type in Subway in the Google search window the third item on the drop down menu of suggestions is Subway nutrition. Click on the first item and it takes you to the nutritional information for Subway. There is a ton of information including fat, fiber and sodium tips and printer friendly nutritional information. The fat, fiber and sodium tips provide specific information on what sandwich to order and also what toppings to choose and which toppings to avoid – excellent information.

What do you do if forget to do your research? The first choice is to inform the staff your specific diet requirements (emphasize that your doctor has put you on a special diet this should get you special treatment) and ask what menu items satisfy your requirements. Your second choice is review the menu while you’re waiting in line and with the basic healthy eating tenants in mind Make Your best guess.

Let’s say you made you best guess and when you get back to the office or home and check the nutritional and caloric values on the fast food restaurants website you discover that what you just had for lunch was loaded with calories, saturated fat and cholesterol. Ouch! All is not lost, just adjust what you eat for the remainder of the day so you don’t go over your daily caloric limit and burn the experience into your memory so you don’t make the same mistake the next time.

Another strategy, especially if you are eating with family or friends, is to bring your own healthy lunch. Most fast food restaurants will not make a fuss if your lunch companions are ordering from their menu. This will generally be more difficult to pull off if you are eating alone but can be done if you select a couple of healthy menu items to compliment what you brought from home.

My final recommendation is to select a couple of healthy sides and don’t select a burger or sandwich. For example, if you find yourself at Wendy’s you can get a side salad and a baked potato. Just be sure not to load up the potato with cheese, bacon or chilli and choose a fat free or low fat salad dressing for your side salad.

You can now walk into a fast food restaurant and have a plan in place that won’t bust your healthy eating or diet plan. With all this in mind you don’t want to eat at fast food restaurants on a regular basis unless based on your research into the nutritional and caloric value you can stick with your diet.

About the Author

Douglas Millington, an avid fitness enthusiast, is the owner of and primary contributer to http://www.fitnessweightlosscenter.com The website provides fitness, diet, weight loss, health and nutritional information to help you achieve your healthy lifestyle goals. Get Fit For Life.

Cuisinart DLC-10S Pro Classic 7-Cup Food Processor $99.00 A perfect gift for new homemakers, the food processor has become an integral part of modern cooking, speeding up a multitude of processes, including kneading dough, slicing, chopping, shredding cheese, vegetables and meat, mincing garlic and parsley, mixing batters, and emulsifying mayonnaise. Cuisinart’s Pro Classic comes with a 7-cup work bowl, four basic attachments for slicing, shredding, chop…

Blendtec Home The Professional’s Choice Total Blender Smart-touch tec’nology with digital touchpad means when the blending button is pushed a pre-programmed cycle automatically speeds up and slows down to draw ingredients into the blade which spins up to 29,000 RPM and thoroughly blend all the ingredients, then shuts off when the cycle is complete, so recipes will turn out perfect every time. The blending jar is our famous patented square jar design …

BonJour Chef’s Torch with Fuel Gauge $39.99 BonJour Chef’s Torch with Fuel Gauge Preparing delicate creme brulee, brown meringue, or melt cheese over soup with BonJour’s Chef’s Torch with Fuel Gauge. It has a fuel level indicator window so you can refill it when necessary. Instructions included….

Hobart FD3/300-1 – Basic Disposer Unit w/ Adjustable Feet & 3-HP Motor, 208-240/480/3 V Disposer, basic unit only, 3 HP motor, aluminum housings, adjustable feet, 208-240/480/60 3-phase. Hobart offers a variety of accessories and options for full customization of their products. Please contact customer service for options that will fit your specific needs. ( Hobart – FD3/300-1 )…

Salvajor 300 2303 – Disposer, Basic Unit Only, 3 HP Motor, 230/3 V Disposer, Basic Unit Only, 3 HP Motor, heat treated aluminum alloy housing, single support leg. ( Salvajor – 300 2303 )…

Hobart FD3/200-1 – Basic Disposer Unit w/ Adjustable Feet & 2-HP Motor, 208-240/480/3 V Disposer, basic unit only, 2 HP motor, aluminum housings, adjustable feet, 208-240/480/60 3-phase. Hobart offers a variety of accessories and options for full customization of their products. Please contact customer service for options that will fit your specific needs. ( Hobart – FD3/200-1 )…

Etiquette Survival – Dining and Social Skills for Adults and Teens $29.95 Etiquette Survival Interactive DVD Series Produced by Sue Fox, Founder of Etiquette Survival and the author of the nationally renowned Etiquette For Dummies and Business Etiquette For Dummies. A humorous and entertaining series of workshops that will keep teens and adults engaged and instruct them on how to behave with self-confidence and grace in social situations. The Etiquette Survival DVD …

ABC News Primetime Basic Instincts 1: What Would You Do? $19.95 “Primetime: Basic Instincts” brings some of most well known intellectual theories and psychological experiments to life for the first time to test people’s innate decision making process. This limited series looks at everyday problems from weight loss to examining how small the world is, how closely connected we all are, what people are willing to do simply because someone in authority tells them …

First Aid Kit With Hard Case- 326 pcs- First Aid Complete Care Kit – Exceeds OSHA & ANSI Guidelines – Ideal for the Workplace – Disaster Preparedness (Color Red) $26.50 This highly organized kit provides comprehensive first aid treatment for a variety of needs. It complies or exceeds all OSHA guidelines for small business and meets ANSI types I and II requirements. The kit is fully organized for easy use and will treat many emergency situations. It can be wall mounted or stored easily. Clean: 30 Antiseptic Towelettes, 30 Alcohol Pads, 6 Sting Relief Pads, 3 Hand …

LED LIP GLOSS – PURE ILLUMINATION – POUTY PINK – PUSH BUTTON (0.30 fl oz) $13.15 WOMEN EVERYWHERE ARE RAVING ABOUT PURE ILLUMINATION The Lano Company introduces new breakthrough 3-in-1 lip gloss product Club goers, women out on the town as well as women everywhere are raving about the new edgy lip gloss. Pure Illumination, created by The Lano Company is a fun 3-in-1 lip gloss product with a LED light feature and mirror. Women can now stay worry free with bad restaurant lighti…