weight loss

Can Fast Food Be Healthy?

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Can Fast Food Be Healthy?

 

Eat out the smart way.

You know the downside to fast food: most of the menu options are high in saturated fat, trans fat, calories, and sodium and low in nutrition. The upside to fast food is that it’s convenient, yummy, and cheap. For many people, the good side of fast food overrides the bad. After all, who has time to think about health when you’re hungry and in a hurry? When work goes late, the basketball game just got over, and you have no energy to cook, grabbing fast food for dinner is an easy solution.

While it’s easy to categorize all fast food as unhealthy, there are healthy options out there. You just need to know where to look.

Picky about Sides

When you think about fast food sides, French fries likely comes to mind first. While they taste good, they’re not good for you. Avoid fried foods like fries or onion rings and steer clear of high-calorie foods like mac and cheese or mashed potatoes and gravy, and choose healthy, low-calorie sides instead like fruit cups, baked potato, or side salads with light dressing.

Go Light on Condiments

What’s fast food without dipping sauces and spreads? You may not know it, but half the fat on sandwiches and wraps can easily come from the sauces. Besides fat, sauces are often high in sodium. Eat healthy and take it easy on the dips and sauces. Avoid ranch dips and mayonnaise spreads. Choose BBQ sauce, mustard, ketchup, or honey mustard instead and your waistline won’t suffer.

Watch What You Drink

A fast food meal may be lacking in the nutrition department and overflowing with calories, so why add to the problem by drinking soda, lemonade, a milk shake, or sweet tea? Reign in the calories and sugar by ordering a water, skim milk, or unsweetened tea.

Be Salad Smart

Many people make the mistake of thinking they’re eating healthy by ordering a salad piled with high-calorie ingredients. Creamy dressings, croutons, cheese, crispy noodles, bacon, and fried chicken can easily make your meal as high in calories, if not higher, than a Big Mac. With the right toppings, salads can be a healthy choice when eating out. Be smart and choose a salad with plenty of veggies, grilled chicken, and a small amount of low-fat dressing on the side.

Go on Portion Control Patrol

If you’re not careful, you’ll be ordering a tray full of food you don’t need. Single servings are often big enough to feed two. Regular-size portions provide plenty of food so don’t supersize your meals or drinks. Sometimes, even the child-size portions are enough food for an adult. The main dish alone should fill you up without unnecessary sides and desserts.

Keep It Under 500

On average, an adult eats 836 calories a meal when eating fast food, but that’s just an average. With a decked-out burger, fries, and drink you can easily consume a day’s worth of calories in a single sitting. Most fast food chain restaurants post the nutritional information of their menu online as well as at their location. This can be extremely helpful, so take advantage of it. Before ordering your food, add up the calories for your meal, being careful to include each item you order. Aim to keep the total calories for your meal under 500 calories.

Make the Switch

Want to eat healthier at your favorite fast food establishment? It might be as simple as making a few food swaps and you’ll save hundreds of calories. Rather than a double-patty cheeseburger, choose a single-patty hamburger. Go for grilled chicken strips rather than nuggets. Try a yogurt parfait instead of a milkshake or choose a baked potato over fries.

Fast food will never take the place of homemade meals made from fresh ingredients, but you can salvage your diet by making smart choices when there is no alternative to fast food.

Worst of the Worst

Want to know what one of the world’s worst burger choices is? Hardee’s two-thirds pound Monster Thickburger. With a whopping 1,290 calories, 2,840 mg of sodium, and 92 grams of fat, the Monster Thickburger contains almost all the calories an average person should eat each day.

 

Nine great benefits of weight loss !

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Why Lose?

Besides the obvious, here are nine benefits of weight loss.

You’re on the journey to lose weight. Whether this is your first attempt or your tenth, you can do it! Making wise choices and the right changes can lead to a new lifestyle that will reveal a new you. The thin clothes you’ve been saving in your closet for that day will be a great reward. But the benefits of weight loss go far beyond feeling confident in your swimsuit and skinny jeans.
Losing just 7 to 10 percent of your body weight is all it takes to experience huge perks of weight loss. So get on it!

Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels. –Elizabeth Berg

1. Improve Health

Let’s just start with your health. While being overweight is clearly connected toan increased risk of life-threatening diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, losing a few pounds can lower blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, lower triglycerides, reverse or even prevent diabetes, and prevent cancer.

2. Increase Energy

Carrying extra weight around day in and day out can zap your energy. Climbing stairs or walking to the mailbox can leave you short of breath. Household chores, caring for children, making meals, or doing your job become more and more difficult the more weight you carry around. Want your energy back? Lose a few pounds through diet and exercise and get the pep back in your step.

3. Get Better Sleep

Wake up feeling tired? Wish you could nap during the day? You may have sleep apnea, a sleep disorder that occurs when the airway becomes obstructed, disturbing your sleep. This condition is common in overweight people. Lose weight, reduce your apnea symptoms, and get a good night of rest.

4. Reduce Pain

Chronic pain is a frequent complaint of overweight people. Low back pain, aching joints, and foot pain are a few of the main culprits. It makes sense. Extra weight places a strain on the back, which can cause pinched nerves, herniated discs, and sciatica. Added pounds take a toll on your joints. The knees are especially hard hit, and the feet bear it all. It’s time to lose the weight and get off the pain meds.

5. Enhance Memory

Notice you’ve been forgetting things lately? Can’t remember a person’s name or where you put your car keys? People of normal weight score higher on tests of memory, learning, and attention than obese people. Obesity also places one at an increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in old age.

6. Boost Mood

There’s a close connection between weight gain and depression. It can become a vicious cycle. You’re depressed so you eat more and sit around. Then you gain weight, so you get depressed. Unfortunately, a side effect of antidepressants is weight gain. The good news is that exercise and a healthy diet can boost your mood and treat symptoms of depression.

7. Clear Skin

Being overweight may lead to skin problems due to hormonal imbalances, stretched skin, pressure on the veins, allergies, swelling, and retained moisture in body creases. Weight loss and a healthy diet can greatly improve the appearance of your skin and complexion.

8. Improve Fertility

Obesity increases one’s chance of fertility trouble. For women, obesity can lead to ovulation irregularities and problems conceiving. Obese men are at an increased risk for lower testosterone levels, reduced sperm counts, and erectile dysfunction. Lose extra weight to improve your overall reproductive health.

9. Feel Confident

Weight loss is a freeing thing. You have energy, you can move around without pain, you’re in a better mood, and your risk of disease is diminished, not to mention you can fit in your skinny jeans. These benefits are self-perpetuating when it comes to weight loss. Lose a few pounds, feel better about yourself, and you’ll have the motivation to lose more!