[Cr33pin]

How do you deal with fast food cravings?

Simple, I stopped fucking eating fast food. I haven't had McDonalds or KFC or anything else in over 4 years. On one New Years Day I was driving back to my hometown and stopped at McDonalds for a quick bit to eat, I then decided that this would be the last time I eat fast food for a year. An then I didn't eat fast food again for the year which then turned into ever again. The good news is after you stop eating it for awhile you dont want it any more.

Do you not have the will power to turn down a Big Mac? If thats the case you need to reevaluate your mental fortitude.

[Tex Cruise]

For me this is quite simple.

The nearest fast food outlet is at least a one and a half hour trip from here.

An hour and a half to two hours driving, plus the cost of the meal, plus fuel (around double the cost of the meal) vs go to the kitchen and make something. It's not a difficult decision for me.
If I happen to be near a fast food outlet and desire something fast to eat because I feel my time would be better spent doing whatever it is that I am doing instead of waiting on a meal, then I get the fast food. It doesn't happen frequently enough to be of any concern.

[`Petronius]

Sugar is the killer for me. It's better to have something fatty than loaded with sugar, so if I want junk food I'll usually break out some cold cuts or maybe some butter coffee and sweetener, if I have to. Then wean off the sweetener. It's working well so far, but I have had a massive sweet tooth ever since I was a kid.

[RealDeal]

Nothing wrong at all with fast food once in a while as a treat. Just don't turn it into a regular thing.

[RealDeal]

(01-25-2017 03:14 PM)`Petronius Wrote:  

Sugar is the killer for me. It's better to have something fatty than loaded with sugar, so if I want junk food I'll usually break out some cold cuts or maybe some butter coffee and sweetener, if I have to. Then wean off the sweetener. It's working well so far, but I have had a massive sweet tooth ever since I was a kid.

Agreed. Refined processed sugar is the worst thing anyone can have. It is the main reason for the obesity pandemic in the west.

[Soyouz]

Find healthier alternatives to help you get rid of the cravings.

A few easy snacks you could make at home :
-baked or friend plantain, it takes a few minutes, and you'll have a crispy/sweet snack
-homemade potato chips : just slice some potatoes and bake them with olive oil
-homemade popcorn : just buy the grains, and cook it in the microwave with some olive oil

While these snacks are not 100% healthy, they're still better than succumbing to a McDonald cravings.

[DJ-Matt]

New health recommendations for sugar intake is to shoot for 50 grams or less in a day, which is impossible if you drink even one soda.

[Kickb]

Just don't do it.

[the chef]

You can eat whatever you want as long as you work out hard enough. Only lifting heavy weights doesn't count.

[Pete]

Whenever you feel a temptation you just gotta figure if eating fast food will help you towards your goal. You're the one that has to deal with the [long-term] consequences.

[lowbudgetballer]

Maybe just eat one small cheeseburger. I lost weight years ago by eating a whopper and diet coke for lunch and dinner.

'baller

[The Beast1]

Solution is to eat more fiber and other protein packed foods.

If you're on a cut you will get cravings no matter what. Try eating things like dates, hard cheeses, and some good chauterie. That will satiate yourself.

Personally, i f*cking love Mcdonalds. I'm going to eat at the Mcdonalds in front of check point charlie because it's a punch in the face of communism.

[TigerMandingo]

ABout once a month or so I'll have Chick-fil-A , which is relatively "healthy" as far as fast food goes.

[hooked_on_tonics]

(01-28-2017 02:30 PM)the chef Wrote:  

You can eat whatever you want as long as you work out hard enough. Only lifting heavy weights doesn't count.

I respectfully disagree. Most experts have come to the consensus that exercise is--at most-- 30% of the formula for controlling weight. The other 70% (or more) is diet. Just type the associated keywords into google scholar and you'll see hundreds of pages of well-conducted studies with clear conclusions on this topic.

The sugar and fast food industry has put a huge amount of money into promoting propaganda that you can eat whatever you want (their products) and still be healthy as long as you workout. This is bullshit.

Michelle Obama also pedaled this crap with her "get active" campaign, where she overemphasized exercise.

Exercise is a phenomenal way to ensure long-term health, but it's a pretty ineffective way to control weight unless you combine it with a clean diet.

Do you realize how easy it is to "undo" an hour of intense workout by simply slurping down a McFlurry from McDonalds?

[NickDunne]

(01-28-2017 02:30 PM)the chef Wrote:  

You can eat whatever you want as long as you work out hard enough. Only lifting heavy weights doesn't count.

An utterly wrong and dangerous statement. Today's processed food & drinks full of cheap energy and other crap can overturn any kind of training many times over.

Only if you are a teenager or a college athlete who is very active in sports, will you indeed feel like you can eat everything. But as soon as you hit 30, the truth will hit you in the face. Hard.

[Tactician]

A lot of the above posts cover the diet and nutrition aspect of not eating fast food. I'm going to talk about it from a money perspective.

From the money side of things, fast food is stupid. In the west, especially Canada and Europe, fast is damn expensive compared to how little satisfaction it gives. Yeah yeah, people have different values blah blah, but two things that really put fast food into perspective for me were:

1. Traveling to Thailand. I went there with a buddy at age 22 and as we were walking around, I think it was Patpong, a hooker offered me 'short-time' for 200 Baht, which was something like $6 back then.* Now when I look at fast food, I calculate its price in hookers.

2. Building a computer. I recently put together a new computer to replace my almost 9 year old laptop. When I was shopping for parts, I noticed how a lot of people fuss over like $30 and I'd fuss over it too. This is really silly because I'm going to be using my computer parts, almost daily, for at least a couple of years vs. eating $10 fast food meals x 3 times which will each just leave me feeling sluggish and I'll be hungry again in about 2 hours. This made me decide to think about how long something will last me before I spend money on it.

What I'm getting at through my silly examples is that you can think about fast food and the very fleeting pleasure it brings in terms of other stuff you want to buy or do. Now, I probably don't 'save money' by not eating fast food, but instead I spend a similar amount on stuff I enjoy way more like trying some exotic dish, or an experience with friends, or some product that adds a lot of convenience to my life and will last a lot longer than a fast food meal will. I think it's a big misplacement of priorities to be buying fast food when you don't have, say, a suit.

Anyway, hope this helps. If you have tons of money, tough shit, you'll have to find your own way. "He who possesseth little is so much the less possessed. Blessed be moderate poverty!" - Nietzsche on fast food.

*declined, but took some pics together because her and her friends were wearing sexy nurse outfits.

[The Beast1]

(01-31-2017 08:29 AM)NickDunne Wrote:  

(01-28-2017 02:30 PM)the chef Wrote:  

You can eat whatever you want as long as you work out hard enough. Only lifting heavy weights doesn't count.

An utterly wrong and dangerous statement. Today's processed food & drinks full of cheap energy and other crap can overturn any kind of training many times over.

Only if you are a teenager or a college athlete who is very active in sports, will you indeed feel like you can eat everything. But as soon as you hit 30, the truth will hit you in the face. Hard.

As I discovered the first year I seriously got into weight lifting, you can very much get gains eating McDonalds.

You'll just feel like utter shit doing it.

[NickDunne]

@The Beast1

I agree.

If you are into gains only in terms of strength and muscle mass, of course you can get them from fast food.
But you will also get a lot of fat and other shite they put into it.

If you want to preserve your health and care about body fat percentage, stay the hell away from McD and similar places!

[joecolombia]

Currently off season so Im having a hard time getting off my cravings, but when I am cutting or try to have a healthy diet.

1. Eat a shit ton of oats with water or non sugar added yogurt (this will take your food craving away)
2. Drink more less 1 lt of water. This will fill you up. sometimes youre not even hungry. your thirsty but you dont know.
3. Have something on you in case you get hungry. i.e a quest bar, almonds or a shake.

[EDantes]

If it were me I'd recommend not completely abstaining from fast food, just eating it in moderation, maybe once a week or so, unless you have specific medical reasons not to.

In the past I tried following some very strict diets, but the result was developing way too much of an "OCD" mindset which was counter-productive and made me feel like shit; today I don't worry about specific diets or measurements much at all, and unless I was a professional bodybuilder training for a contest I wouldn't do that anymore; I just eat mostly real whole foods, cook most of my own meals, occasionally enjoy some fast food and judge how I feel.

A guy I talked to told me that for non-professional training this is probably for the best, trying to micromanage every individual calorie and nutrient0s if you're just training for basic fitness, in his words, is like "trying to train for Formula 1 driving" if you're goal is just to get a driver's license.

Others might disagree, but I've actually seen many successful professional athletes such as Connor McGregor adopt this more 'hands off' approach to training, where using your personal judgment and instinct is prefered over micromanaging every calorie you consume.

[NickDunne]

(02-01-2017 11:56 AM)EDantes Wrote:  

...trying to micromanage every individual calorie and nutrient if you're just training for basic fitness, in his words, is like "trying to train for Formula 1 driving" if you're goal is just to get a driver's license.

Great sentence!!!

A strategy that works out for me is to have one cheat day per week when I don't pay attention (or eat like I used to before coming to discipline). I do try not to go completely ballistic on that day so still not a lot of sweets, but say a bowl of pasta or a big pizza will do the trick.

[rainy]

Give me a break.

It's not that hard to put a box of protein bars in your trunk, or nuts, or fruit, or beef/turkey jerky, or hardboiled eggs, or pre-cook meals for the week on Sunday so you have plenty of food when you need it, or cook a bigger meal in the evening so you have leftovers. Or worst comes to worst, get a burrito/bowl or salad with meat somewhere, there's numerous healthy places you can get quick bite to eat nowadays.

Or, go work in a fast food restaurant for a week and see how fucking disgusting the food is. I used to deliver pizzas in high school. Got to see how it's really done behind the scenes. Never gotten a pizza since unless it's a higher-end Italian restaurant or in Europe. It's not just that the food is borderline inedible but worse, the people handing your food are straight up dirty. Used to work with a few guys who wore gloves when handling the pizzas coming out of the oven but they didn't take the gloves off when they went to the bathroom. They'd go in, take a piss or a shit with the gloves on, come right back out and go back to being the last person to touch your food before the customer. 10 second rule is alive and well. Food storage is terrible if it's even real food at all. I know some "meat" doesn't even have to be refrigerated. Rats and cockroaches too.

But as someone who previously quit an unhealthy lifestyle and hasn't eaten fast food in years unless in the middle of nowhere on a road trip, try this. Don't eat any fast food for 60 days. Then go stuff your face with whatever fast food you're having cravings for. I guarantee it'll make you sick to your stomach with severe stomach pains. Your body adapts to the shit in fast food, the chemicals, the preservatives, the grease, all the GMO's, but when you rid your system of it and reintroduce it, your body shuts down. Why?

Fast food is not real food. You can put a McDonald's burger on your shelf for 6 months and it won't grow mold. For perspective, McDonald's or KFC in Central/Eastern Europe aren't legally allowed to include most the shit in American fast food.

Your body is addicted to the chemicals. You smell it. Then you crave it. You see signs for it and you get a dopamine rush. Some of the chemicals in fast food and even processed food react in your body similarly to opiates.

But if you want to eat fast food, go eat fast food. If you're serious about your body, have some willpower.

[rainy]

(01-28-2017 02:30 PM)the chef Wrote:  

You can eat whatever you want as long as you work out hard enough. Only lifting heavy weights doesn't count.

Please don't spread that disinformation in here.

Diet, as pointed out above, is roughly 70% of weight loss and staying fit. Now if you're fit and just going for body fat %, sure you can eat shit and maintain if you work out enough.

But are you going purely for aesthetics or for a healthy overall lifestyle? What good is busting your ass in the gym if you're killing your organs? What good is busting your ass in the gym to live a long, healthy life if your insides are aging far faster due to a shit diet?

In general, RVF is about a lifestyle, all encompassing, improvement, striving to be the best you can be in all aspects. Suggesting, which you just did by implication, to consider no more than what you see in the mirror is poor advice and misleading. You can either half-ass it and skip steps which will catch up to you, or you can work every day to whole-ass it.

[The Beast1]

(02-02-2017 03:15 AM)rainy Wrote:  

(01-28-2017 02:30 PM)the chef Wrote:  

You can eat whatever you want as long as you work out hard enough. Only lifting heavy weights doesn't count.

Please don't spread that disinformation in here.

Diet, as pointed out above, is roughly 70% of weight loss and staying fit. Now if you're fit and just going for body fat %, sure you can eat shit and maintain if you work out enough.

But are you going purely for aesthetics or for a healthy overall lifestyle? What good is busting your ass in the gym if you're killing your organs? What good is busting your ass in the gym to live a long, healthy life if your insides are aging far faster due to a shit diet?

In general, RVF is about a lifestyle, all encompassing, improvement, striving to be the best you can be in all aspects. Suggesting, which you just did by implication, to consider no more than what you see in the mirror is poor advice and misleading. You can either half-ass it and skip steps which will catch up to you, or you can work every day to whole-ass it.

Oh phooey, get off of your elitist lifestyle high horse and live a little.

Eat a cheeseburger, smoke a cigarette, drink a Coke, drink some beer. Do it sparingly.

Why bother maximizing your life span if you're going to live an emasculated life doing it?

[TigerMandingo]

(02-02-2017 04:24 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Oh phooey, get off of your elitist lifestyle high horse and live a little.

Eat a cheeseburger, smoke a cigarette, drink a Coke, drink some beer. Do it sparingly.

Why bother maximizing your life span if you're going to live an emasculated life doing it?

Haha, too true my friend.

Relevant video: