Stop Eating Fast Food: 5 Ways to Stop Your Food Addiction and Take Control Over Your Diet Now

Obesity? Would You Like Large Fries With That?

High blood pressure. Obesity. Increased Cholesterol. Feeling sluggish or having low energy. Constipation. Dehydration. Diabetes. Hypertension. Heart Disease. Food addiction. Accelerated aging. Malnutrition. Low self-esteem. Low sex drive. Decreased mental clarity.

You’d think these are enough to make us stop eating fast food and junk foods, but evidence suggest otherwise.

The list above isn’t even complete – these are just some of the effects of eating too much fast food! Skeptical? Watch the documentary “SuperSIZE Me”, where a man ate nothing but foods from McDonald’s for 30 straight days and see for yourself why a fast food diet is practically suicide.

Most of us are fully aware of the health risks of eating fast food. We all know it’s bad for us, that it makes us fat, ill, unfit and depletes our energy. So why the heck do many of us are still unable to stop eating fast food?

Tom Venuto, in his article The Real Way to Stop Eating Fast Food, showed that :

The results of a new survey from… the journal OBESITY (Feb 2009) provide some answers:

Researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health surveyed 530 adults about their attitudes towards fast foods.  They found that…the primary reasons they [people] eat it anyway are because of the perceived convenience and a dislike for cooking. (i.e., they think fast food is always cheaper than healthy food).

It seems that convenience and affordability are more important than long term health to many people. So perhaps the solution lies in getting more and more people to perceive healthy foods as fast, fun, easy, affordable and convenient, and perceive fast foods as poison (which is actually true).  Here are 5 ways that will help you stop eating fast food:

How to Stop Eating Fast Food

1. Understand The Marketing Ploys Behind Fast Food

Understand that the reason why most of us think that fast food equals easy, cheap and convenient is because of brilliant marketing tactics. McDonald’s doesn’t spend millions and millions of dollars for nothing. It’s all mind-programming stuff. Learn how to be mentally immune to it.

Is fast food really cheaper than preparing your own meals at home? Why don’t you try this experiment and see for yourself: buy nothing but fast food for 7 days and calculate your total spend. Then after that, shop from the supermarket and prepare healthy, reasonably-sized meals for the next 7 days, and compare how much you spent. I bet preparing your own meals is much cheaper, not to mention that you would have also probably lost some weight.

Is fast food really tasty? I have reasons to doubt that it’s even real food, as this video demonstrates. Besides, can you honestly say McDonald’s make the best tasting burgers? Of course not. It’s hardly gourmet food, is it? But their marketing is incredibly effective – so much so that we’d been conditioned to NOT mind that their burger patties taste like cardboards. Would you like some fries with that?

2.  Learn how to make 1 to 2 meals every week.

Many people eat fast food because they “can’t cook” or “won’t cook”, but that’s hogwash. Cooking is just like any other skill – it can be learned, and with the right tools, support, resources, and enough practice you will learn how to do it well.

Still reluctant? How about just learning one recipe per week? That’s not a tall order, is it?

As you learn to cook more and more healthy recipes, these meals will gradually replace your fast food meals until you hardly feel the need to eat junk food.

Look for recipes that are simple, fun, fast and easy to make. If you’re looking for low-fat, low-calorie, well-balanced recipes tailored specifically for optimum fat loss, Vince DelMonte’s Empowered Nutrition Done-For-You Fat Loss Meal Plans suits the bill perfectly. It will really help you if you are intimidated by grocery shopping and are ready to cut back on all the take-out and drive-through fast food.

3. Have a Sustainable Plan – A Plan That You Can Realistically Stick To

The reason why many people fail to stop eating fast food is they dive right in and make drastic changes. This usually creates a sense of deprivation and extreme discomfort or psychological pain, and before you know it you’re gorging tray-fuls of French Fries and greasy hamburgers down your mouth! Not a sustainable plan, is it?

So take baby steps! For example, instead of diving right in by swearing to not even look at a KFC bucket ever again, start by getting into the habit of making your packed lunch and snacks. Make some sandwiches, fruit and vegetable salads, tasty wraps, fresh fruit smoothies and juices, home made snack bars, wholewheat pasta, boiled brown rice, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, and take them with you to work or school everyday.

Another way you may want to try is to gradually reduce your fast food intake. If you are currently eating 7 fast food meals per week, start by eating only 6. Then next week eat only 5. Then the week after, eat only 4 fast food meals, until you get it down to zero, or at the most a once-a-week “cheat meal” rather than a daily habit.

4. Create an Environment That Ensures Your Success

If you resolve to stop eating fast food, you’re likely to fail if your kitchen is full of junk foods to begin with! So stop buying foods that you know are making you fat, like:

• ice cream
• cakes, chocolate bars and candies
• fat-rich, sugar-rich and preservative-rich microwaveable meals
• crisps and chips

So get rid of these junk foods from your cupboards, pantry, fridge and freezer, and don’t buy them anymore. This ensures that even if you do crave for them, because they are not within reach you’re likely to succeed eliminating them from your diet.

Buy more fruits and vegetables and eat them as snacks in place of sugary foods. Swap fries for steamed vegetables or a salad. Swap candy bars and coffees for fruit smoothies. Swap fried chicken for lean chicken breast. Your tastes in food will change over time as you do this, and your body will start craving more healthy foods instead of the heavy, saturated, nutrient-deprived fast food.

5. Be Aware of Other Good Reasons Why You Should Stop Eating Fast food

Realize that fast food extend far beyond health issues – it has economic, ecological and global implications as well.

Did you know that the agriculture industry suffered when fast food chains exploded? The fast growth of fast food chains has led to mass slaughters of cattle. Because fast food chains require so much meat and poultry, their demand leads them to make deals with large slaughter corporations. These deals and practices forced many smaller businesses to go bust. There are more implications:

• The average American eats fast food more that 150 times per year. (Fast Food Nation)
• The disposal of packaging in landfills results in the release of millions of pounds of greenhouse gases as the paper rots. (Global warming!)
• Majority of packaging is not recycled or otherwise disposed of properly. (Destruction of our forests and beautiful beaches!)
• Fast Food Packaging is one of the primary sources of urban litter. (Pollution and environmental degradation!)

If you’re aware of these issues, you’ll be able to exercise your power of choice more responsibly. Be more conscious with what you eat and where your food came from.

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It’s tailored for both men and women who want to stop eating fast food but are clueless about how to make their own delicious, well-balanced, nutritious healthy meals from scratch.

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