Fast Food Fast Conclusion

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Once a week, every Wednesday morning, I meet with 3 other guys to talk about life. I get up around 5:30am, get ready for work, and head down the tollway to meet at our usual time of 6:00am at our usual spot, McDonald’s, and sit at our usual table. We talk about whatever is most prevalent in our lives at the moment. Most often, it’s work. We end with confession and prayer and head off to our respective jobs.

As you can imagine, trying to do a 40 day fast food fast and meeting at McDonald’s once a week is not ideal. It’s actually quite frustrating. Something happened the other day that blew my mind though. One of the guys that meets with us is a certified personal trainer that works for Lifetime Fitness. He fits the part well–the first time he met with us he didn’t grab food like everyone else. He came prepared with his own apple without letting the temptation of carb-loaded fatty goodness get to him. The apple isn’t what surprised me though…

I told him about my fast food fast and he responded that he hasn’t had fast food in 12 years. 12 YEARS! Instead of my mere 40 days, that’s 4,380 days. My struggle suddenly seemed slightly blown out of proportion. Is it really that hard to not eat fast food? To not “just grab something”. Or rather, is it that hard to not plan ahead? This guy seemed to have a pretty good handle on it.

In light of this I’m happy to say that I completed my fast food challenge. No fast food for 40 straight days. The result? Meh.

I try to structure my goals very specifically to actually get to an end result. This one failed. It’s VERY easy to still eat unhealthy while avoiding fast food. AND it’s easy to still eat out. If nothing else I realized that there are other options. It still requires planning to actually eat something decent. And I realized that yes, I can survive without a drive through.

For the record, my first meal back on the waggon was a bacon egg and cheese biscuit from McDonald’s. I’m not sure what the next one will be, but I happened to notice this gem close to my office…

In-N-Out Burger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, please.

  • BJG

    Congratulations on the 40 day fast food fastu2026 You are knocking those challenges out! Impressive. I signed up for The Test Yourself 5K at the shops at Legacy. You should do it if youu2019re healed up.

  • http://deaconbradley.com Deacon Bradley

    40 days with no fast food is… wow. I try to live healthy, but for some reason I still just LOVE fast food (Wendy’s is my fav.).nnYou want a short challenge that you WILL feel massive results? Try one week eating Paleo. I notice a difference after only 2 days when I eat this way. The only problem is it’s difficult so I generally just eat about 75% Paleo and the rest just “not awful.”

  • http://www.georgeandmandy.com George DeJohn

    Challenge accepted! It seems I’ve heard a ton of people talk about Paleo (including my brother in law who runs Crossfit Mansfield (you would get a long great with him I’m sure)), but I haven’t actually tried it myself. I like a good challenge though, so we’ll see what happens!