Day 4 - Fast Food Angst

I am not much of a fast food eater.  Occasionally I will drive through In-N-Out when I'm traveling, but that's about it.  That is until about six months ago when I stopped at MacDonald's on my way to work one morning because the coffee line at Starbucks was too long.  While there, I thought I'd try a sausage Mcmuffin (no egg) and a hashbrown.  You know.  For nastagia's sake.  I hadn't had a McMuffin or hashbrown since I was a kid.  They were, in a word, good.  Salty, cheesy, crispy good. 

And so I fell into a very bad habit of eating breakfast at MacDonald's nearly once a week.  I commute 3 hours from home almost every week and return a day or two later to spend the rest of the time working out of my home office.  Stopping at MacDonald's for a quick breakfast on my way gave me a little break from the monotony of driving and filled my belly.  But eeegads.  At what cost? 

My little meal was costing me 520 calories and 31 grams of fat.  At home, I usually eat a breakfast of stovetop oatmeal or fruit and toast, for a whopping 250 calories, which includes the milk in my coffee.  So once a week I was doubling my caloric intake at breakfast.  It's difficult to eat well when traveling, and if I don't plan ahead with healthy snacks and meals in my cooler, I wind up eating out the entire 2 or 3 days.  Looking back it is quite possible that my time in the office negated all my home efforts for eating well and keeping my calories low. 
And as if eating fast food wasn't bad enough already with all the fat, salt, and preservatives, researchers have now found another reason for us to avoid it all costs.  Apparantly fast food packages, like the little baggies hashbrowns and fries are served in, are coated in some sort of very evil chemical which prevents fat from leaking through the bag.  It is now known that this chemical leaks onto the food, which is then ingested into our bodies.  Not a good thing. 

Clogged arteries and chemical poisoning  

To be honest, it didn't really occur to me how often I was eating breakfast at Micky D's until I cleaned out my car.  Embarrassed by the wrappers, I had been stuffing them under the seats before passengers could see them.  When I pulled those bags and wrappers out from under the seats this past weekend, the gravity of that caloric overload hit me.  What was I thinking?


So today I planned ahead.  I ate breakfast before I left home.  I did stop for a coffee.  Nothing fancy.  Just a coffee with milk.  Ate a half of sandwich for lunch and saved the rest for tomorrow.  Packed some homemade chili with veggies from home for dinner tonight and tomorrow.  Have scheduled a workout with my brother's kids for tonight and a walk with a friend tomorrow night.  Also brought snacks with me - trail mix, jerkey, freeze dried strawberries, and natural licorice sweetened with molasses to satisfy my sweet tooth and keep me from raiding the candy drawer in the lunch room. 

Abrupt subject change....I attended the cardio boxing class at the club last night.  My back is sore today, which I expected, but I feel GREAT.