Is Fast Food Really that Bad?

Whenever you talk to a personal trainer about how to improve your eating habits, one of the first things he will say is “Don’t eat fast food!” This is because if you cut it out, you automatically cut down on saturated fats, processed foods, excess sugar and unnecessary chemicals in your body.
Although we preach and teach this regularly, this advice is seldom followed because most people simply don’t think fast food is that bad. They figure if they eat it a few times a week, that’s not so bad because they work out. Take a closer look and you’ll see that eating fast food on a regular basis can derail the progress of even the most religious fitness buffs.

I’ve taken a few popular fast food joints and analyzed the items that we usually don’t consider “that bad”. By now it’s common knowledge that the French fries, Whoppers and Big Macs are fitness no-no’s, so those are not disclosed in this article. One can also assume that the sodium and cholesterol in many of these items are off the charts, so I only included calories and fat. Keep in mind that the items on this list are seldom eaten alone. Usually they are accompanied by French fries, hash browns, other side items or sugary drinks. The following figures would be the minimum you would consume for the meal and of course, doesn’t include everything else you have eaten for the day.

McDonald’s

Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips (5): 630 calories, 33 grams of fat

Hot Cakes & Sausage: 770 calories, 33 grams of fat

Sausage Biscuit w/ Egg: 500 calories, 31 grams of fat

Taco Bell

Fiesta Taco Salad: 860 calories, 46 grams of fat

Taco Salad: 630 calories, 34 grams of fat

KFC

Honey BBQ Wings (6): 540 calories, 33 grams of fat

Hot Wings (6): 450 calories, 29 grams of fat

Arby’s

Market Fresh Roast Beef & Swiss: 777 calories, 41 grams of fat

Chicken Salad w/ Pecans Wrap: 638 calories, 38 grams of fat

Subway

Pastrami Sub (12inch): 1140 calories, 58 grams of fat

Assuming the average person needs 2,000 calories per day and 37 grams of fat per day, you can see that it’s unreasonable to consume these types of items on a regular basis and expect to lose weight. Even if you work out regularly, you can expect to maintain weight because if you consistently eat excess fat, your body burns of the “new” fat (that which you eat consistently) before it gets to the “old” fat (the fat you were trying to lose when you started working out in the first place).

This is because as long as you’re giving your body an excessive amount of fat and calories to burn as fuel, it doesn’t need to burn off what it has. And try as you might to override those rules of nature, if your body doesn’t have to burn it off, it simply will not do so. We avoid what works because it is uncomfortable or inconvenient. So we have all these new diets, pills, drinks and surgeries to make us smaller when in fact we were actually smaller years ago before we had all this technology!

Our attempts to trick the body into losing weight are not working. Our bodies are smarter than we are – all we need to do is listen. So, read those nutrition labels and cut down on the excess that you’re taking in. Only then will your body begin to work on those reserves.

Remember:

Just because you do something doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

For more information on these and other restaurants, check out:

http://www.fatcalories.com/index.cfm