Sponsor |  Jaymzx | Mar 29, 2005 3:13pm | Anyone who has seen the movie, "Super-Size Me" (and if you haven't, I really suggest doing so!) knows that fast food is fairly bad for you. What if you need food on the run and you need to stay on your low-carb diet? There are quite a few low carb, high protein gems to be found in fast food restaurants. I'll use McDonalds as an example.
I start my day in the drive-thru like a lot of people. Lately I've been too lazy to get up 15 minutes earlier and make my eggs for breakfast, so I pay McDonalds to do it for me. Did you know you can order most of the things on the menu a-la-carte? It's true. My typical breakfast consists of two sausage patties and one scrambled egg. Each of these items costs $0.99 and comes to a little over three dollars, after sales tax. This is a high-protein, low carb (~2 grams) breakfast and it has the staying power to hold you over until lunch. Lately, my local McD's has raised the prices on their sausage patties and eggs to $1.09 each. The good news is that the Sausage Biscuit is still firmly planted on the 'Value Menu' for $1. Two sausage biscuits, please. Just throw the biscuits away, with the added benefit of absorbing the excess grease from the sausage.
Time for lunch. Anyone knows you can order a burger without ketchup and throw away the bun. This works, but gets a little tiresome, and it lacks other nutrients, notably dietary fiber. I've found that the best low-carb solution for lunch is the Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad. Since I usually find myself hungry later in the afternoon, I order a Double Cheeseburger with no ketchup and strip the bun. Between the chicken and the two beef patties, it has enough protein to keep me going. Beware of the other salads, however. You would think the Chicken Bacon Ranch salad would have one of the lowest carb-counts on the menu, but you would be surprised. The Newman's Own Ranch Salad Dressing has a whopping 9 grams of carbs per serving-mostly sugar. This is kind of asinine, since Ranch dressing typically is around two or 3 grams per serving, often less. The Caesar? 4 grams. 2 are from sugar. I suspect that the serving size on the dressing packets is more than the average serving size listed on store-bought dressings. This may account for the additional carbohydrates.
I rarely eat dinner at fast food restaurants, I will admit. The menu is the same as the lunch menu, however. And salad and some de-bunned burger should suffice. If you're really on the go, I would grab a low-carb nutrition bar and have one of them with plenty of water. These work out well if you are one of the dessert-craving people like myself. They can be fairly sweet and there are plenty of bars out there with 2 grams or less `Net Carbs'.
I usually take a dietary supplement daily when eating at fast food restaurants. Personally, I use the One-A-Day CarbSmart supplement. One other thing is to make sure you get plenty of dietary fiber, since you're not going to see much from McD's. Sugar-free antacids make good calcium supplements, too.
That's how I do it...what about everyone else? |
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Low Carb Lifestyle → Discussion