Can't Let My Health Suffer

I am extremely busy.  I'm sure you are, too.  Americans are busy people, in general.  It's part of our culture.

When you're busy, it becomes very difficult to cook for yourself.  With all of the conveniences we have available to us, it is so easy to push cooking down on your priorities list.  The fact is that you cook way healthier for yourself than almost anybody else does.

Today marks a full month that I have gone without buying fast food.  Actually, every breakfast and lunch that I've eaten in the past month has been cooked/packaged and brought from home!  (I do splurge and go out to restaurants for dinner on occasion.)  Yes, it's hard. You really have to schedule what you're going to eat for the week and not let your fridge run out of supplies.  You have to get up earlier, and sometimes sacrifice an extra 15 minutes at night.  However, my diet (meaning what I usually consume, not some gimmick weight loss plan) can get unhealthy quickly if I'm not paying close attention.

I love Egg McMuffins and Chicken Quesadillas as much as anybody else.  Trimming fast food out of breakfast and lunch time was certainly the most difficult.  When you have to drive 45 minutes one-way to work each day, and there aren't any restaurants nearby other than fast food, you really have no choice but to bring your own food if you want to be healthy.  Looking at the nutrition certainly helps to motivate me!

The last fast-food meal I ate came from Sonic's Drive-In.  I got two of their fun hot dogs, a small order of chili cheese fries, and a regular-sized cherry limeade chiller.  It was a pretty big lunch (I hadn't eaten much that day), but it certainly wasn't unreasonable by my eating standards.  According to Sonic's nutrition calculator, I consumed 1766 calories, including 80 g of fat and 4360 mg of sodium!  That's obnoxious!!

I'm pretty sure that it would be difficult to prepare a lunch for myself that came anywhere close to that.  So, I'm hoping to keep this streak going.  Our lives are busy, but we can't let our health suffer.  Take time for yourself.

Challenge yourself, and know that I'm challenging myself along with you!
~RoB