How We Stopped Eating Fast Food

I was a single mom for a long time before I met my husband and that meant a tight income, working a lot of hours and very little free time. Add to that I used to HATE cooking. So that meant way too many dinners of ordering pizza or going through a drive-thru.

While I still occasionally have Chick-fil-A, I'm not sure the last time we ate McDonalds or Wendys (Wendys still has a bomb Twitter account though). We've had Arbys once in the last year. If we're on a road trip, we're much more likely to eat Subway.

But it wasn't easy! For YEARS we had fast food probably once a week, and more often for me if I include the times I went through a drive-thru for lunch. Here were the things I did without even realizing that I was eliminating fast food from our meals. Hopefully, one or two will be helpful for you!

I became accountable to someone

In the beginning, it was my husband who nagged me about how unhealthy and bad for us fast food is. I got to the point where I really didn't want him to say it again. Now as a coach, I'm accountable to my challengers in my monthly challenge groups. We spend an entire week on nutrition training and keeping track of what we eat. We do that so we can become aware of what we're putting into our bodies and make a conscious effort to stop eating the bad crap. Writing down your food every day is a real eye-opener! Having to tell other people what you ate is a big motivator!

I did the math

Have you ever seen the Autumn Calabrese video where she shows how much it cost her to buy dinner from McDonald's versus how much it costs to make the exact same (but healthier) meal at home? In fact, she had more food leftover and spent less money. Fast food is truly expensive when you do the math versus cooking dinner for an entire family. I've cut about $200 a month (maybe more) from our food budget since we stopped eating fast food.

I focused on my goals

As I was preparing for Mrs. Virginia, I wanted desperately to get rid of that bloated-I-look-6-months-pregnant belly I was carrying around. It didn't take much research to see what crappy food was doing to my body and it took very little time to get in shape for Mrs. Virginia, and Mrs. America, by changing my nutrition and working out five times a week.

It became inconvenient

When my husband was overseas, the boys and I moved to Arlington, Virginia, so I could be within a few miles of my job in Washington, D.C. A trip to the closest Chick-fil-A at dinnertime was a whopping 45 minutes! Even the closest McDonalds, which was maybe 2-3 miles away, could take a half hour! It became a lot more inconvenient to go anywhere. In fact, that year pretty much curbed my shopping addiction to Target as well because it was a lot of effort to get there!

Dinner time is family time

With two kids and working parents, we made dinnertime sacred family time. No electronics can be used during this time and everyone sits at the dinner table until dinner is over. This is where the teenager even occasionally tells us about his day! It's not quite the same when everyone sits down while you pull cheeseburgers out of a Mcdonald's bag.