You can eat healthily anywhere - McDonalds

Following my previous post and continuing with the challenge that you can eat healthily anywhere, for this post, I decided to cover McDonalds.

Who doesn’t love McDonalds and even their tagline says “I’m Lovin’ it”.

Again, my usual disclaimer before I proceed with showing you how to eat healthily there.

“If you only eat in this place once in awhile, then I say go ahead and enjoy. But if your visit this place regularly, then you might want to follow these tips carefully to ensure your gym workouts don’t go to complete waste.”

OK… so how do you eat healthily in McDonalds? Simple. Follow the tips below and you will be surprised at just how healthily you can eat.

1) Change your drink to Coke Light. This will instantly shave off a good 200 plus calories from your meal. Avoid the Milo and Ribena at all cost if possible. I can’t tell the difference between Coke Light and normal Coke, but I know some die hard Coke fans call Coke Light an insult to the Coke brand.
2) Stay away from the fries – Fries is a whopping 300 to 400 calories and poor fill up factor. Fill up factor is how full you feel after eating a certain food. So if you had to choose 2 different kinds of food which both have 400 calories, you want to choose something that is more filling – ie higher fill up factor.
3) If you are hungry, instead of whacking fries to fill yourself up, it is better to eat a burger (or maybe half). Burgers in McDonalds is around 400 to 500 calories (almost the same as fries, but higher fill up factor). Being a glutton myself, I usually eat 2 burgers at McDonalds, as 1 burger just ain’t enough. But since I rarely eat McDonalds, I guess its OK to enjoy properly every once in a while
4) I have friends who will buy 2 Fillet-O-Fish burgers, throw away the buns for one of the burger, and the other burger becomes a double patty burger. Good protein, less carbs. Good technique, I tried it once, and didn’t quite like it. But if you are one who lifts heavy and going for size, this is a good way to get in your protein intake at McDonalds, while reducing the carbohydrate content.
5) Generally, the food in McDonalds isn’t all that bad as people say. What makes it bad are the Fries, drinks (Ribena, Milo & Coke) and the portions are small, which causes us to overeat. So be weary of this and order wisely. If you can slip in a healthy snack before you hit McD’s, you will be partially full and less likely to indulge full on. This way, just one burger might be enough and you won’t have to whack your fries or chow down that second burger.

How often should you eat McDonalds where you can just eat and enjoy? Well it really depends on your total activity per day (exercise and any other activity like walking etc) as well as your age and body make up. If you workout regularly, then its ok to indulge in this every week and not see any difference to your waistline. If you are just a couch potato who drives to work, sits on the office chair for 8 hours, drives home and sits on the couch to watch TV, then once a week will make your waistline grow. Of course we also have some people who may be couch potatoes but have high metabolic rate, so even eating it everyday won’t make a difference.

My advice – Eat whenever you want to and try to be healthy like mentioned above. If you feel your waistline growing, then you know you need to cut down somewhere or do more exercise. It all comes down to balancing everything. A good benchemark to start with is once a week. If you feel once a week doesn’t make a difference, then maybe you want to try twice a week and see what happens.

So now you can eat healthily even in McDonalds. Of course its not the healthiest choice for eating, even when you eat carefully like suggested above, but its still better than just eating eating away without knowing some tricks and facts. Also, we all need to enjoy every once in awhile… so enjoy and as usual, I look forward to your comments.