Cutting out fast food from my diet

[Emageht Tsoluoy]

Have you tried it?
I am thinking about it.

Fast Food = any food from any source that has a commercial.

I am planning on doing the "cook your meals for the week" style of transition, where i can do most my cooking on the weekends, and toss them in tupperware then stack in the fridge till its food time.

I am thinking it may reinforce good portion control, and meal habits.
Lately 90% of my meals have been burgers, pizza, and tacos and i feel like garbage, so i want to change that.

Please share your stories, the good/bad/ugly.

What are some of your favorite meals?
What is pretty easy to prepare?
Does the last meal taste as good as the first? (since it sits in the fridge for a few days)

[dwightyo39]

Put stuff you like in a crock pot. Profit.

[Deleted]

Joining, healthy meals for one week.
i gained something around 3 lsb this week from binges lol

[Nadiru]

What are some of your favorite meals?
What is pretty easy to prepare?
Does the last meal taste as good as the first? (since it sits in the fridge for a few days)

One of the best meals you can make for the week is a roast chicken on Sunday. The legs and thighs are usable meat in other dishes, the breasts are a meal in of themselves, and the drumsticks are good snacking. If you want to go full autarky, you can save the bones and scraps and boil them to make chicken stock, too. There's a catch though: Roast chicken is a little tricky to get right; you risk making the meat too dry and it'll store (and taste) not as delicious.

Easiest things to make: Soups (Split pea, chicken), Stews (Beef in particular) and sauces for noodles (chicken paprikash and tomato sauce go here.) Making sauces for use over the week is a really underrated time-saver too, since you can spend the time you need to slow-cook the tomatoes and get everything to break down into a mess of delicious tomato-y goodness. The fact that it's cheaper than a jar of Ragu and you get more of it is nice too.

[Kokolums]

If you're doing this to lose weight, may I suggest just hiking the appachain trail?

http://imgur.com/gallery/s05Z5Gj

[Aqua]

It's easier than you think. I did it for a while, now I'm on kind of a mix, but if I DO eat out, it's very lean stuff. No fries or especially greasy stuff.


Rice and Pasta dishes keep well, but I portioned them with vegetables and salad.

Try to vary it up every other day or you'll get bored. I made one dish to freeze on saturday night and one on sunday and they last like two weeks.


And yes to the guy who suggested chicken. That sucker will save you loads. Make you broth, stews, curries, you name it.

[Noradin]

Identifying "fast food" by wether it has a commercial?
I really, really advise you against that folly.
It is an entirely unsuited indicator for what is supposedly healthy and what is not.

[Independent voter]

I cook everything myself. I got a rice cooker, a bread maker and a combo pressure cooker, slow cooker. I like power tools.

I eat a lot of lentils and beans with rice. Yeah, I lost some weight and put it back on once I discovered my bread maker had a cookie dough setting. I've since cut back on the cookies.

[Elf Boots]

A lot of places do have salad options. You could always pick those.
Identifying 'bad' places by commercial might not be the right way to go. Everyone needs to advertise. How about stop buying from the large commercial chains? Support small, local places instead?

But if you're wanting the personal challenge, go for it. Personally I tend to do a big cook on Sunday so I have dinners ready for the week. I get in too late to start cooking from scratch. Usually either a stir fry or a savoury rice dish, depending on whats ons special when I do the shop.

[Kokolums]

The best way I lose weight is to have a specific, itemized meal plan. I pick specific foods and times.

Example:

1. 6:30 AM - 1 sausage, egg and cheese croissant, 1 20 oz bottle of juice
2. 9:30 AM - 1 banana, water
3. 11:00 AM - Marie Calendar frozen salisbury steak meal, a bottle of iced tea.
4. 6:00 PM - 1 banana, water

Any day I follow that specific plan, I wake up the next day and will usually have lost weight. Sometimes my weight might be unchanged. I won't put on weight.

I tend to avoid a big dinner. Dinner is more a snack.

I can replace 1 banana with

1. a small box of strawberries and kiwi, or
2. 1 can of chopped pineapple in water (not in syrup).
3. a fruit cocktail.

You can replace the Marie Calendar with anything so long as its just 400 calories or so.

1. A small tupperware of spaghetti and meatballs.
2. A small tupperware of other pasta like Fettuccine Alfredo.
3. A small tupperware of steak and potatoes.

Personally, I need that sausage egg and cheese croissant for breakfast. If I don't get that, I lose my mind lol. If I get really hungry before bed I can calm myself knowing that delicious croissant is coming very soon.

I like bananas, potatoes, pineapple, red meat and spaghetti. This plan gives me what I like in small portions.

[Grimbold21]

grilled or fried in olive oil chicken breast/ turkey steaks with brown rice, boiled eggs and green veggies. Replace the white meat with tuna or fish of choice for variation.

Thats basically my diet when im the one cooking.

The hardest thing for me.is cutting on sweets, cookies.and the like, which i try to reducr to one day a week

[Revi]

Fast food is not a part of my regular diet at all.. Tbh, I think people make a bigger deal out of cooking than it is.

I usually eat 4 proper meals a day. First and second one are both either bread, cereal or something just as easy, preparation time of 0-2 minutes. Third meal is often a tuna salad some dinner dish (meat, vegetables, etc.) preparation time of 5-15 minutes. Fourth meal is dinner, preparation time 5-15 minutes (plus however long it takes in the oven or on the stove).

Seems like it would take me a lot longer to travel to a fast food place, stand in line and wait for my food. Cooking your meals for the week is a good idea, but it also makes it sound like it's some time consuming massive project. It really isn't.

[Emageht Tsoluoy]

Identifying "fast food" by wether it has a commercial?
I really, really advise you against that folly.
It is an entirely unsuited indicator for what is supposedly healthy and what is not.

please 2 provide examples of commercials for food-places that do not sell over processed garbage.

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A lot of places do have salad options. You could always pick those.
Identifying 'bad' places by commercial might not be the right way to go. Everyone needs to advertise. How about stop buying from the large commercial chains? Support small, local places instead?

But if you're wanting the personal challenge, go for it. Personally I tend to do a big cook on Sunday so I have dinners ready for the week. I get in too late to start cooking from scratch. Usually either a stir fry or a savoury rice dish, depending on whats ons special when I do the shop.

well, the local places that may spot a local commercial i would see as more of a once-in-a-long-while treat.
the non-local commercial-joints i would outright stop eating at.

[ParanoiD84]

I need my chinese food atleast, dont care about the other fast food places unless its pizza hut witch is hard to find here in sweden.

[ItachiZaku]

I really hate leftovers. I'd rather order a fresh pizza back-to-back days than have to reheat leftover pizza.

I should get into better habits, but I'll be dying anyways. when I try to eat better, I usually end up making big salads, fruit and veggie salads. The fruit salads tend to go back more quickly, so you'd have to prep those twice a week - don't overbuy those (that was my first big mistake). But if you can do that, and then prep like chicken breasts on the weekend... that would work for me, so it might also work for you.

[IntellectuallyChallenged]

please 2 provide examples of commercials for food-places that do not sell over processed garbage.

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well, the local places that may spot a local commercial i would see as more of a once-in-a-long-while treat.
the non-local commercial-joints i would outright stop eating at.

That's impossible. There is no such thing as a public restaurant that doesn't serve over-processed garbage. Even the small mom-and-pop places still get their stuff from the same distributors as the major chains. There is no difference unless you're doing it yourself in your own home. Even then, it's no guarantee that you're doing it right. You have to actually pay attention to what is in the food you're making. How it's processed. How fresh it is. Where it came from. And so on.

Eating food is an absolute necessity to continue living. And we completely take it for granted. We should find necessity in paying better attention to what we are doing to the one and only body we will have in this lifetime. Don't let medical science make you complacent. We wouldn't even need most of it if we just took better care of ourselves individually. Personally, I haven't set foot in a doctor's office or hospital for over 20 years.

[tankbug]

Put stuff you like in a crock pot. Profit.

Was going to say the same thing. Crock pot makes everything easy and tasty.
Veggies, meat, spices, broth, throw it in and set it on low. Forget about the whole thing and come back 6-8 hours later to dinner and lunch for several days.
Even easier, just throw chicken fillets and bbq sauce in the pot and make supertender pulled chicken.

[Deleted]

Losing weight is ez mode if you have strong willpower.

I don't really eat fast foods. Sometimes like once in a couple of months/year.

Gonna eat pumpkin cream today and rice with baked apples and cinnamon. Mrrr:>

I seldom eat meat and even then it's either chicken or beef and never pork.

[tankbug]

I really hate leftovers. I'd rather order a fresh pizza back-to-back days than have to reheat leftover pizza.

I should get into better habits, but I'll be dying anyways. when I try to eat better, I usually end up making big salads, fruit and veggie salads. The fruit salads tend to go back more quickly, so you'd have to prep those twice a week - don't overbuy those (that was my first big mistake). But if you can do that, and then prep like chicken breasts on the weekend... that would work for me, so it might also work for you.

Some pizza gets soggy and shitty after a day, but lots of food doesn't deteriorate like that. Prepare a bunch of meat that you can use all week quickly. Quickly fry up some veggies, put some meat in them and add like chili sauce or pesto and spices. Faster than fast food, cheap and healthy.

[belfpala]

That's impossible. There is no such thing as a public restaurant that doesn't serve over-processed garbage. Even the small mom-and-pop places still get their stuff from the same distributors as the major chains. There is no difference unless you're doing it yourself in your own home. Even then, it's no guarantee that you're doing it right. You have to actually pay attention to what is in the food you're making. How it's processed. How fresh it is. Where it came from. And so on.

You sure about that? How are you defining processed food?

Anyway, I start keeping a list of things I'm hungry for. I do it in three categories. Fast recipes, things that I can make in less than 30 minutes like a stir fry. Fire-and-forget recipes, basically the crock pot suggestion above. And bulk recipes, as was mentioned in the OP. Keep a good grocery list, just get what you need, don't let the chips and cookies aisles tempt you.

And I still eat fast food sometimes. No harm in moderation.