How often you can eat fast food and what to replace it with. Nutritionist tells us

founder of the International Institute of Integrative Nutritionology

Healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition do not accept fast food. “Fast food is blamed for many health problems: obesity, diabetes, heart disease. Is it really impossible to eat a burger without harming your health even on holidays? I know the answer and will tell you why you should limit the use of fast food and what to replace the “garbage” food.

Fast food is not only dishes from fast food restaurants, but also convenience foods, store-bought sweets, sushi and rolls. Burgers, fries, deep-fried wings, sodas, and candy bars are also categorized as junk food, meaning junk food.

How often you can eat fast food and what to replace it with

In such food is a minimum of useful nutrients, but an excessive content of trans fats, sugar, salt, flavor enhancers, carcinogens (chemicals that increase the risk of malignancy) and other additives.

Excess salt and artificial additives threaten to cause gastritis, colitis and kidney problems. The authors of a study published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology proved that processed foods from convenience stores and restaurants contain phthalates, which disrupt hormones and can cause fetal defects or interfere with conception.

You should minimize such foods to avoid triggering metabolic deterioration, obesity and cardiovascular disease. I do not recommend eating fast food and other products from the category “just warm up” more than twice a month.

It is desirable to gradually abandon this food and replace it with a healthy alternative. For example, bitter chocolate (choose bars with at least 72% cocoa content), nuts, bananas, avocados will help to boost your mood and replenish magnesium stores in the body.

Buns, buns, cakes and sausage sandwiches can be replaced with eggs, nuts and fish – these are rich sources of essential amino acids, the deficiency of which provokes the desire to eat baked goods. I advise you to prepare baked goods at home, including whole-grain bread without added sugar and yeast.

Fast food cannot replace a full meal rich in protein, fat, complex carbohydrates and fiber. If you find yourself craving a burger, you’re probably experiencing natural hunger and your body is demanding a healthy meal, not an unhealthy surrogate.

Don’t replace lunch or dinner with snacks on the run – a sandwich or croissant with coffee does not satiate well, raises blood sugar levels, triggers hunger and overeating.

How to give up fast food

Start eating a balanced diet. Switching to a nutritious diet will help fill the deficiencies of nutrients, vitamins and minerals, which often provoke cravings for fatty and sweet foods.

Eat enough so that hunger attacks due to a missed breakfast or a nutritionally poor lunch do not make you eat two cheeseburgers at the nearest café. The body does not need fast food if it is not deficient in nutrients, macro- and micronutrients.

Find alternatives to fast food. For example, prepare homemade shawarma and burgers, choosing lean meat, fresh vegetables, freshly baked buns from healthy flour and without added sugar.

Instead of plant-based chocolate bars and cakes, take healthy sweets to work with you: dried mango and sugar-free fruit marshmallows, chocolate made from carob, nuts.

Most often the desire to drink cola is caused by a lack of water in the body, which is best filled by a couple of glasses of pure water, not a liter of liquid calories with excess sugar and fast carbohydrates.

Replace sweet sodas and juices with mineral or plain water, sugar-free morsels, herbal tea. I note that the craving for alcohol can be associated with a lack of potassium and calcium. To fill the deficit of these elements I advise you to eat citrus fruits, seaweed, salmon, nuts, beans.

Get enough sleep. Lack of sleep provokes overeating and cravings for fast carbohydrates, fatty and sweet foods. Lack of sleep makes you look for pleasure in food, and harmful and sweet is perceived by the body as the most delicious.

Therefore, sleep at least seven hours a day to avoid systematic overeating and the problems that follow from this: obesity, heart and vascular disease, diseases of the liver and gastrointestinal tract, diabetes.

Full nutrition and health care will help to get rid of cravings for fast food. A healthy diet without excessive sugar and unsaturated fats cleans the taste buds, adjusts the metabolism and hormonal system, and heals the body as a whole.

I strongly recommend that you stick to your diet, eat breakfast within a couple of hours of waking up and remove junk food from your daily menu.