Cutting back on fast food can be hard when it's an integral part of your daily schedule. Whether it's before work, easy lunches, or too-tired-to-cook dinners, there are real reasons we fall to fast food so often. For most people it's not laziness, but either time constraints or genuine exhaustion. This is why it's so important to remember you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to cut all fast food starting tomorrow. If you're trying to cut back on Goodburgers but you give in once, you don't have to give up the whole thing. You can just start again the next day, the next week if you have to. The most important step is finding a way to make the changes stick. Forcing them when you can't manage and subsequently getting overwhelmed and giving up won't help. Start utilizing as many or as few of these tips as you can manage and move on from there. Hopefully as you have small successes eating less fast food, you’ll have more motivation to take it steps further.
Breakfast
Breakfast is the hardest thing for some people to have the motivation, energy, and time to prepare themselves. In fact, some people swear by not having any breakfast. As someone who used to go into work at 7am and do a lot of on-your-feet work, I don't know what kinds of things these people are doing until lunch that not eating in the morning is sustainable for them. I wonder if this lack of breakfast isn't just a compromise in the face of low energy and rushed mornings.
If you're currently not eating any breakfast at all, might I suggest trying an apple or other fruit early in the morning. Fruit are actually complex carbohydrates due to their fiber content, which subsequently is also very useful at getting your digestive tract cleared out and moving for the day. It's a particularly great way to start your body up in the morning. However, do note that if you go from not eating to eating fruit in the morning, you will probably get hungrier faster and will need to eat before lunch, due to the whole digestive system start-up thing. Prepare for this possibility, working with your body to see how you respond to changes!
If you are someone who needs breakfast and have made some kind of drive-thru sausage burrito your morning ritual, things get a little more complicated. Especially if you don't have the option to eat until lunch, you need to ensure your morning sustenance is particularly sustaining. This is one reason we love that quick fast food breakfast - even though it lacks real nutritional impact, it definitely packs in those calories. Fruit is still a very good option, but you will need more than that. Options like kefir or yogurt are especially good as, just like fruit, they provide significant benefit in the morning other than just being a nutritional source. Eating a probiotic food at breakfast time will help prime your microbiome for the rest of the day and should help in perking you up. The downside here is you really should only be eating completely unsweetened (and full fat) versions of these foods and I know not everyone is a huge fan. In fact, don't feel bad at all, because I do not like yogurt. I'm going to share my best secret right now for breakfast, and I hope everyone has a nutribullet or blender to take advantage.
If you blend a thinner yogurt like Stonyfield's probiotic, or mix Greek yogurt and milk, or use kefir, you can blend that with 2-3 bananas and it will turn into a liquidy drink that's sweet and easy to stomach if you don't like yogurt. You can add other things like pineapple, (cooked) sweet potato, frozen berries, soaked or fermented flax or chia seed, and raw, unfiltered honey. I make a full sized blend of this and portion it out to three people each morning. About 200-280 grams (sometimes the bananas are big) to myself is close to 200 calories and it contains everything you need for the perfect breakfast food. If you're making it for only yourself, you could quickly have an easy to make, nutrient dense, 400-500 calorie meal first thing in the morning.
Okay, well, what if you don't like bananas… I actually am not the biggest fan of bananas, either. But somehow, blending yogurt (which I don't like) and bananas (which I don't like) blitz together to form a fully bearable product. I used to simply mix milk with yogurt to make it chuggable, to get it over with. This is one reason I actually like kefir, because I can just drink it. My biggest issue with yogurt really just is the viscosity. Point is, one way or another, give it a try if you are in need of a filling and quick breakfast food to avoid the drive-thru. You can always move into different kinds of smoothies as well, if the banana really doesn't cut it.
If even making a smoothie seems like too much work, you may simply need to wake up earlier. This is absolutely the hardest thing in the world, I know. The biggest boost for me to being able to wake up earlier in the morning was when I began to supplement with magnesium. This is an entirely different subject so I won't be getting into supplementation now, but if you feel like a failure for having all the trouble in the world getting up even 10 minutes earlier, don't feel bad. Fixing up your diet will help, getting to bed earlier will help, not looking at your phone in bed, and yes, everything else you've ever read about how to sleep better is true. Getting out at sunrise first thing in the morning will also start to help out your sleep schedule and make waking up in the mornings easier. Unfortunately, this post is not about getting better sleep, but doing so is one of the most integral parts of both avoiding fast food breakfasts and avoiding skipping breakfast.
If getting up earlier is simply not an option, preparing your breakfast the night before might be. While prepping breakfast the night before might illicit thoughts of overnight oats, I would recommend against that as oats actually contain somewhat high phytic acid - antinutrients that bind to vitamins and minerals and take them right out of your system. Soaking grains, nuts, and seeds is a viable method of preparing them, but the liquid leftover needs to be removed and not consumed. As someone who actually really likes grains, nuts, and seeds, there will surely be a more in-depth look at this later.
Preparing your breakfast the night before can just be putting everything you need for your smoothie together and stashing it in the fridge. This is especially helpful if you’re using frozen fruit, as allowing it to thaw overnight will make blending it much easier, as well as drinking it in my opinion. It could be putting all the tools out that you need to fry up eggs first thing in the morning, meaning tired-morning-you only has to get out the eggs. The secret to your breakfast meal is, it can really be anything. There are “best” things to eat at different times of day, it’s true, but if you’re trying to move from avoiding fast food to preparing it yourself, it can help to simply make anything. Just eat literally anything that isn’t from a drive-thru. Once you’re adjusted to the idea of making your own breakfast, you move on from there. You just have to start somewhere.
Lunch
If you eat lunch at work, you need to be able to bring something enjoyable, nourishing, and possibly shelf stable. It can be hard, even if you’ve brought your own lunch, since there’s every chance you might just order out instead just because it’s more appealing. Since you’re already out and don’t have any options other than what you brought, if it suddenly doesn’t appeal at your hungriest part of the workday, what can you do?
Predicting what famished-work-you will do many hours in advance may be the trickiest part. You know your tastes better than I do, so I can’t guess what you’re going to choose most often. Depending on the time and resources you have at work, you may want to do something like bring a whole avocado and cut it open at work. Don’t be afraid to pack your lunch with a variety of foods instead of just one “entree”. Pack more than you might eat with shelf stable options that you can just bring home and eat later if you didn’t use them at work. You can bring small containers with a bunch of different foods, giving yourself more options to lower the chances you won’t be feeling what you packed later on. If you’re packing leftovers to microwave (may I suggest glass for this, by the way), packing things that require different cooking times in different containers may help make it more palatable, and thus more attractive an option. Packing filling foods with good fat and/or protein content like avocados, or say cubed up cheese, hard-boiled eggs, or canned fish will help keep you full so you don’t stop somewhere on your way home, either. These things don’t have to be the entire meal, but adding them will help keep you full.
If you eat lunch at home, but have a similar issue to mine where we kept leaving for errands while hungry, you may simply need to have a dynamic lunch time. It’s okay if it’s not at 12 noon sharp every day. Have a light lunch before you leave for your errands or prepare a plate to pull out of the fridge as soon as you get home. If you know the night before that you’re doing errands tomorrow, make extra dinner and plan to have leftovers for lunch. Sometimes remembering to make your own food can start days in advance when you’re preparing your dinner schedule for the week. It’s almost impossible to make something like pot roast, lasagna, meatloaf, stew, or a whole chicken and not have leftovers. The nights when you have big meals like these, plan to have the same thing for lunch. There have been days where I had the same meal for dinner, then lunch, then dinner again, though not everyone is as at peace with leftovers as I am.
If you eat lunch right before you go to work, then this becomes somewhat closer to the “breakfast” guidelines. It’s important to consider the purpose of each meal aside from “what time of day is it at”. As with breakfast, and of course dinner, you can eat anything you want. We actually have eggs at lunchtime - high calorie, nutrient dense, high fat and protein meal make eggs a winner for lunch. Just because it’s lunch doesn’t mean you need a sandwich, nor does it have to be light. Lunch is the middle of the day, when most people are going to be utilizing their energy for the rest of the day ahead. It can be, and probably should be, filling.
Dinner
This can be a tricky mealtime because often we can be quite done with the day by this point. Dinner doesn’t need to be flashy just because it’s dinner. In fact, dinner being the lightest meal of the day is an idea I’ve often seen suggested. Breakfast and lunch should typically be quite heavy, as you’re using that energy throughout the day, while dinner is “the end” of the day and we are typically done all our work and ready to rest, which means we don’t need as much food at this point in the day. This can be different depending on your schedule, of course. Some people who work later into the day may need that extra energy, so simply take into account your personal energy needs and weigh the size of your meals throughout the day against the energy demands you typically have.
Again, as hard as it is to hear, planning is integral to getting your fast food habit under control for dinner. Go to a second hand store every day until they have a good condition slow cooker or instant pot (or both, honestly) and prepare your dinners the night before. Yes, the night before - those inserts come out. Put everything together and put that whole dish, covered in the fridge. If it’s a quick meal in the instant pot, it can wait until you get home, or put the crock pot together in the morning and set it before you leave. The money you’ll save not getting fast food is going to be worth whatever one of these costs. You can make tons of things in these, including a whole chicken in the slow cooker. Chicken thighs do well in the instant pot, and those are really cheap and naturally tasty. It’s not going to come out like its been oven roasted, but it’s usually quite alright. You may need to remember to put something from the freezer to thaw in the fridge - write yourself an eye-level note on the door, so you’ll see it before you leave. You can set a labeled alarm on your phone, whatever helps you remember things.
Planning at the grocery store is part of this planning, as well as freezer and fridge rotation. Split up discount packs of meat into different bags and freeze half of them, then remember to start pulling them out the day or two before its time to use them. Plan around meals when you shop, not just buying whatever seems good. If you’re budgeting, be careful with this. You may read a few recipes you like that may want you to use only a small amount of something that you have to buy a whole thing of at once. You can leave these ingredients out, find many recipes that all utilize similar ingredients, or simply stick to the tried and true “meat + vegetable + carb” dinner formula instead of finding a bunch of fancy recipes. Many people who say buying groceries ended up costing more than buying fast food are simply making errors - completely fixable errors. Grocery shopping should not cost more than buying fast food.
Snacks
Sometimes it’s not even a full meal that we’re utilizing fast food as a filler, but just random cravings. Maybe you’re out and you think you’ll just grab a quick treat to tide you over. Now, of course, this isn’t bad every once in awhile, but if you’re already eating fast food very regularly, you’ll want to stop these snacky snack habits as often as possible to make a good impact on your overall health.
The key to stopping the snacking is to eat better throughout the day. That’s really it! I really, honestly mean it. When you eat nourishing food and eat within the amount of calories your body actually needs based on your energy usage, you don’t get hungry when you don’t need it. There is some element of addiction as well, where everything from our brain chemistry to our gut’s microbiome is urging us to pull into the drive-thru. This is also only ever going to stop when you stop feeding into it - you have to fight the urge. It’s a viscous cycle, but if you want it to stop, you have to put in the work.
Once you start eating more nourishing foods, you’ll have fewer snack cravings. Many people who have gone on diets before might be scoffing, but the secret is that those fad diets did not nourish you. If you were, and no shame we’ve all made mistakes, chowing down on salads and low fat green smoothies and finding yourself feeling absolutely famished regularly, that’s because you were in all actuality not being nourished - in fact, too many anti-nutrients from an overdose of raw vegetables may have been contributing to your hunger. You need fat, you need protein, and you can benefit from complex carbohydrates. More than that, though, you need micronutrients.
Your body needs fat and protein, but it has specific uses for all of the micronutrients - the vitamins and minerals you always hear about. Many people are likely coasting on a sustained deficit of many micronutrients and your body simply adjusts as best as it can, because that’s what it’s designed to do. Once you fill in those micronutrient needs with the food you’re eating, you will crave food less often. It will happen, guaranteed. Those regular cravings are specifically because your body is telling you it needs vitamins, it needs minerals, and it needs you to eat something to give them to it! But then, oh no, you’ve eaten a nutrient-hollow 12 count nugget coated in oxidized frying oil! The constant hunger pangs will continue until nutrition improves.
I promise the vicious cycle will end when you put in the effort to eat better - and that doesn’t mean low fat, sugar free, Jenny Craig, sad bacon-and-egg-free salads without dressing. It means eggs, seafood, liver, fruits, orange and purple vegetables, and meat, all cooked with salt in butter and olive oil (except maybe the fruit). There’s nothing sad and boring about eating well.
There’s nothing wrong with controlled snacking (nor the occasional treat), but constant snacking has a negative affect on your digestive system. There is a lot of myth and legend surrounding snacking, which will make for an excellent post later, but having your digestive system constantly “on” is not good. Personally I often have a snack an hour or two before dinner, though not every day. When you do want a snack, opt for fruit over refined sugar sweets. Avoid chips and other snacks with vegetable oils, though salty snacks are good at curbing sugar cravings as well. I have soaked sunflower seeds, kefir, canned clams or oysters, milk, an apple, grapefruit, or other fruit when I want a snack. I’ll have other things as well, but I don’t typically have access to a wide variety of things. I occasionally have actual snacky snacks, but the truth is we just don’t buy those things regularly anymore. The last snack I had that wasn’t a whole food was Taokaenoi fried tempura seaweed about a week ago, very tasty. Once your body is properly nourished, the negative effects of unhealthy snacks is more easily overcome, so you can indulge now and then guilt-free.
Putting it Into Practice
There are some tidbits of info that help to know when planning ahead and cooking your meals, like knowing it usually takes 4-5 days for a whole bird to actually thaw in the bottom drawer of the fridge, while pork chops will thaw faster. If you don’t usually cook for yourself, these little things can add up to be overwhelming. In all reality, cooking using processed ingredients may be a stepping stone into better eating if you’re currently a not-so-good cook. It shouldn’t be the end goal, but if cooking even simple things is too intimidating, the step from fast food may require an intermediary “processed food, but cooked at home” step. You can always lean on foods that are tasty without being cooked, or those requiring minimum effort to taste good. I’ve found that a small patty of good quality ground sirloin fried up quickly with salt and extra virgin olive oil is actually very tasty, and anyone could easily do this.
I can’t repeat enough times that you need to simply take it as slowly as you need. If you accidentally took it too slowly and think you could actually have been going faster, there’s no downside, you can just start taking more steps from there. However, there’s a great risk from going too hard too quickly, since overwhelming yourself makes giving up entirely seem much more appealing. If you do too much and get overwhelmed, you do the opposite of the intended effect - which is, that these changes make you happy and give you confidence. When you take on more changes than you can manage, it makes you feel worse and less confident. Don’t risk that! Make smaller changes, maybe even smaller than what you think you can handle. That way you’ll almost certainly succeed, gain confidence, and be able to move forward even more.
Replacing Fast Food is a three part series. Replacing Fast Food pt. 1 was general tips that you can use to avoid fast food more often. Replacing Fast Food pt. 3 dives further into the nutrition aspect of replacing fast food and how to more easily hit your micronutrient needs for each day.