Let’s say you’re one of those single people with a high-end job and never have time to cook a healthy meal at home. And if you had someone to cook for you, you probably wouldn’t have the time or the peace of mind to eat it. If this accurately describes the circumstances you find yourself in, how do you manage to go on a diet to lose weight? You’ve probably thought that the only type of discipline you could ever see yourself bucking up on would be a fast food diet if such a thing existed. And now, such a thing does. As long as you know what kind of fast food to go with.
On diet forums, it’s not uncommon now to hear people claim that certain types of fast food from places like Taco Bell, like healthy tacos or burritos with only a third of the kind of fat you’d find in a regular taco or burrito dish – it really helps them lose weight. The typical story is that a fast food diet consisting of healthy examples like these, if eaten in more than 15 meals a week, with regular exercise, can help you lose 25 to 30 pounds a year. Taco Bell, in particular, is capitalizing on the good publicity its healthy Fresco menu has generated and is now offering these items at its drive-thru windows. You don’t even need to go inside the restaurant for these orders.
Now that I think about it, the fast food diet is not such a revolutionary concept. Remember how Jared Fogle really put Subway on the map several years ago by saying that he lost over 200 pounds eating nothing but Subway food twice a day? Now there are all kinds of other restaurants jumping on the bandwagon. It could be sandwiches at Dunkin’ Donuts that remove the yolk, it could be a Panini sandwich at Starbucks, or it could be a grilled chicken sandwich at McDonald’s (which is low-calorie, but somehow isn’t marketed that way). Subway will even be on the hit TV show The Biggest Loser. They’re trying to get one of their contestants who weighs over 300 pounds to try to lose those pounds by eating nothing but Subway food. And they’re offering him hundreds of dollars for every pound he loses.
Doctors who specialize in diet and weight loss are not at all surprised. Fast food, as far as they’re concerned, has a bad rap. There is nothing inherently wrong with it. People are crazy about fast food; if the top chefs that the chains employ could find a way to retain that flavor while cutting calories, it would really help America, they feel. As long as people care about losing weight and staying healthy, they shouldn’t have a hard time finding healthy alternatives on any fast food chain’s menu.
Still, you should realize that fat isn’t the only thing to look out for when ordering one of these weight loss items from these fast food menus. Almost all of them can contain prodigious amounts of salt. As far as the Dieting Association is concerned, you’re not supposed to get more than 2,500 mg of sodium a day. Now that I think about it, reducing your salt intake can be wonderful for your chances of heart disease. They put what salt can do to you right next to smoking and cholesterol.
The moral of the lesson is that you could possibly go on a fast food diet to lose weight. If you are careful what healthy options on the menu you choose and make sure they don’t add salt just to make up for what the item loses in flavor from all the fat that has been removed.
