Fast Food
Fast food is mostly not recommended as most of it is high fat and choices are often very limited. Also many fast foods are fried in fat - even if they are heated up in an oven. The proliferation of fast-food outlets is believed to be a prime cause of obesity in the USA. However, it is not easy to give up fast food entirely and it may even be counter- productive. So if you enjoy fast food, have it very occasionally and choose carefully. Instead of fried foods choose salads and grilled foods and eat only small amounts of high-fat, high-calorie toppings, like full-fat mayonnaise and salad dressings.
It can be a little confusing, so always don't go by the rules of choosing vegetables, salads, fish, or chicken. The fish is almost always deep-fried, making it a poor choice and some chicken meals are deep-fried as well. Surprisingly, some vegetable entries, like vegetable pitas, no-meat burritos and some salads are higher in fat than a hamburger. Lastly, some of the menu items are low in fat because they are simply small in serving size, making the calories relatively low as well. This is fine, but it means that you may want to order side dishes as well, so you need to make sure the side dishes are healthy low-fat choices as well.
Once again, not all salads are safe and in all cases, portion sizes are often very large. In some cases, there are a number of side dishes that, by themselves, are good choices, but when you add them up into a meal, the calorie and fat content gets out of hand. As is typical in nearly all restaurant food, the sodium (from salt) content is often extremely high, don't add salt to your meal and in many cases, you should avoid salt for the whole day to make up for the meal! Both Mexican food and Pizza are typically considered off limits for people who are dieting in a traditional way. It is short term thinking to avoid these foods if you like them. Instead, learn how you can fit these high calorie meals into your plan by choosing wisely.
Most women complain often that the reason they find it difficult to lose weight, is because they don't have time to cook. The idea that you need lots of time to prepare and cook healthy meals is a myth and probably one circulated by the fast-food industry. After all, the very name "fast-food" implies that home-cooking is slow-cooking. Not true! It's perfectly possible to prepare healthy weight-reducing meals in minutes.
- Following some tips from experts (freely available on net, local news papers etc.) and friends
- By cooking simple one-pot meals
- By maintaining a stock of quick-cook foods
- By cooking your week's meals in one easy session