Eating out
It’s been a long day at work, 10 hours were spent taking orders from hangry customers. Your coworker Belinda called out this morning because she got into a “minor car accident.” You know she’s just hungover though because she told you yesterday that she was going to a Sabrina Carpenter concert and that there’s no way she’d be in today. You’re expected to pick up the slack- of course. It was probably illegal for your manager George suspend your break, but you’d rather stay in high standing with him.
So you just kept on working. Now it’s closing time, and you’re considering taking a few bites out of George’s arm for making you work in a state of hanger that’s worse than that of the diners you’ve been serving all day.
The Breaking Point of Burnout and Hunger
You drive home, absolutely ravenous for the first high-sugar, high-fat, sodium-filled food you can find. You encounter a Taco Bell and immediately pull in, ordering eight soft tacos, four sour cream packets, and a large Baja Blast. It’s $20, “Not a bad deal. Doordash would have been $35,” you rationalise.
There’s no way you’re waiting until you get home to eat your tacos, so you risk exposing the seats of your 2003 Dodge Stratus to possible sour cream stains. You don’t care, it’s WORTH it. You rip through all eight tacos in less than 8 minutes.
The Aftermath: Satisfaction Meets Sluggishness
After finishing up, you continue your drive home, all at once feeling satisfied and no longer hungry, but bloated and sluggish.
You start to self-reflect on the decision you just made; in one hour, you’re going to feel lethargic and fatigued. You’ve come to learn that this is the consequence you face for choosing convenience. After all, today marks your 157 day streak of eating eight tacos from Taco Bell. It’s still annoying though- you have THINGS to do tonight. Sweeping and mopping might be out of the question as soon as you sit on the sofa feeling as heavy as you do right now. Your spouse is going to be upset that you ate without them.
Also, what the heck were you doing buying food anyway? You have $120 worth of groceries sitting in fridge. What are they there for? All of these thoughts and more run through your head as you sit there self-deprecating for not making conscious decisions in your state of food deprivation.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. More than ever in history, Americans are spending more money for food prepared outside of the home, in restaurants, and fast food establishments. It’s obvious that this is unfavorable for a multitude of reasons. If you want to change your health, body composition, or even improve your financial health, you must find the right coping mechanism for you to avoid the temptation towards eating out.
Eating out is not sustainable. Not for your body, not for your pockets, not for your mental health.
Effects Of Eating Out On Physical Health
You likely already know that eating out is bad for you. Fast food and restaurants alike often serve meals that are high in calories, yet low in essential vitamins, nutrients, and antioxidants. These “empty-calorie meals” contribute largely to the epidemic of obesity in America.
Consistently eating large meals can damage the expression of hormones controlling hunger and can lead to weight gain. These dishes are often not comparable to oversized home cooked meals as many restaurant and fast food companies put research into how they can pull consumers in to become absolutely addicted to their meals and slow the hormones that make you want to stop eating their food.
Food engineers do this by including lots of added sugar, saturated fat, salt, trans fat, and even cocktails of chemicals enhancing flavor, that are proven to be carcinogenic (cancer-causing) in order to keep you addicted. This combination of inflammatory amounts of sugar, fat, sodium, and added chemicals can contribute to causing high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) potentially leading to chronic heart issues or heart attack, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, and many other unfavorable health outcomes. If you so choose to eat out, do your research, and read the nutrition facts online – more information on this shortly.
Eating Out Is Expensive
Eating out is also expensive in comparison to making meals at home. The average meal prepared at home in America costs between $4-6. Frequently when cooking at home, one ends up with many servings of the same dish. And is able to get 2-4 meals worth of food from one traditional cooking session. This is what tends to bring down the cost of preparing meals at home.
At a restaurant or fast food establishment, if you’re lucky you might have some leftovers to last you all of one meal. Chances are these meals will cost about $7 at the lowest in this day and age, ranging upwards of $20 or more per meal. When you factor in any gas used to get to the eatery, or delivery fees, you might be spending significantly more than these estimates.
Keeping priorities in mind, I personally believe that time is money and money is time. I sympathize with the many Americans who resort to eating out often; convenience is important to most people, which makes us willing to pay the premiums. When it becomes a habit though, it may be a worthwhile consideration for many of us to cut back on this expense and save some money.
Effects Of Nutrition On Mental Health:
Though some doctors are willing to preach towards the effects of diet on mental health, there are unfortunately still many health professionals that are catching up or perhaps not making the connection that food is medicine. This can be true for many chronic health conditions. But some that are more frequently overlooked are mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
Earlier, I touched on the lack of vitamins and minerals contained in traditional restaurant meals. Consistently eating meals like this increases the risk of developing a nutrient deficiency. Certain nutrient deficiencies can cause disruptions in metabolism, leading your body systems to function below-par. As a consequence of this, deficiencies of certain nutrients can directly contribute to feelings of depression or anxiety.
As an example, seasonal depression is often associated with deprivation of vitamin D from the sun. Vitamin or mineral deficiencies can also worsen the symptoms that come along with mental health disorders. For example, the tiredness observed when someone has an iron deficiency coupled with depression. People often eat out without paying much attention to what they consume. Their dine-in or take-out choices usually offer little to no positive nutritional value.
One thing all food does have though, is calories. These empty calories fill you up without providing much nourishment. It’s giving you less opportunity throughout the day to hit your ideal vitamin and mineral targets.
The Vicious Cycle of Poor Nutrition and Emotional Crashes
This is actually just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential negative effects of dining out and eating fast food in relation to mental health. High sugar and high fat foods can cause spikes and dips in glucose that correlate to mood swings. The brain’s pleasure centers are also affected. They are flooded with dopamine, a hormone related to addiction and happiness, when eating foods like these.
Regularly flooding dopamine centers can make one feel dependent upon external sources, like food, for another “hit” of it. This reduces satisfaction from other activities, that under more well-regulated circumstances would give you smaller, more consistent hits of dopamine throughout the day to keep you happy and fulfilled.
Another problem. Your body will begin to request more and more dopamine over time, leading to more unfavourable food decisions. And contributing to the vicious cycle some people find themselves in, telling themselves that “only food makes me happy.”
Conclusion
In conclusion, eating out can cause a lot of unnecessary strain on your body and budget. Though there are thankfully many alternatives! Below, I’ve proposed alternatives listed in order from the most nutritious options to the least nutritious.
Keep in mind that even the “least nutritious” alternatives are better for your body and wallet than the majority of fast food options. And are thoughtfully convenient for those working upwards of 14 hours per day or more. Remember, there is no shame in choosing the option that is best for your circumstances. If you only consume fast food right now, your diet can only improve in quality from here!
Option 1 – Cooking and/or packing a meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner:
For those that enjoy cooking and have or make the time for it, this is a popular option. And sometimes it is the best option. If you can eat fresh fruits and freshly cooked vegetables, they retain more nutrients, which then degrade over a few days before the food spoils. If you can manage this cooking schedule, go for it!
As for those who are super busy, this is not always practical. As someone who has two hours of time at night to dedicate to prepping myself and my daughter for the following day, I get how this would be impractical. For a long time, cooking every morning, packing a lunch, and making dinner in the evening was a standard societal expectation. Before we found more activities to fill our time on earth, it was also more feasible. If you know this is too much of a commitment for you, option 2 offers a similar quality of food while taking less time overall to prepare it.
Option 2 – Meal prepping for three to five day intervals:
If you want to have more control over what is in their food, and have at least two to four free hours per week for cooking, this is a fantastic option. Meal prepping consists of choosing a recipe and making it in bulk so that you have many servings to sustain you for three to five days. This is just about as nutritious as cooking every night, and compatible with many schedules.
Maximise Convenience with Smart Snack Prep
It is also a wise practice to meal prep snacks such as fruit and vegetables in containers. To account for your personal snacking habits. Even better, you can make cooking and meal prep easier. How? By chopping produce and storing it in the fridge for up to three days in advance of cooking.
Keep in mind that experts generally recommend throwing out foods from the fridge after three days. But many people still choose to prepare meals for five full days regularly. The downside- the food may not taste as fresh. There is a risk of eating spoiled food, and not everyone wants to eat the same food for five days straight. I prefer to prep for three days at a time every Wednesday and Sunday. The flavour stays fresher for three days as opposed to five.
One honorable mention that can be applicable to options one and two is using a meal subscription service such as Hello Fresh or Every Plate. These companies send ingredients and instructions to make recipes, and you can order them in your quantity of preference.
You can often opt for healthy or low calorie options if you are interested in health improvements or even tailor your plan to follow a specific diet type. Services similar to these often offer family plan options. As well to increase your servings if you want some extra to meal prep.
Option 3 – Healthy freezer meals and frozen meal subscription services
I recommend this option for those 10+ hour shifts that leave you trying to pry your eyes open by the end of the day. Or for those who are not often home to prepare and eat meals there. You can also use freezer meals to cover the gaps between the days you’ve prepped meals for.
As noted before, the longer a meal is stored, the more potential for a slow degrading process of certain vitamins and minerals within the food. There are also some preservatives that may be harmful to health in frozen meals. And this can vary based on brand quality. These factors can make frozen meals a slightly less attractive option than home-cooked meals.
However, if you find a quality frozen meal in the grocery store and you know your alternative would be to eat out, one freezer meal would surely serve you better than 158 days in a row of Taco Bell (or your other fast food crutch.)
Choosing the Right Frozen Meals
Using this option, you can even set up a subscription service to your house to make life more convenient with brands like Factor that offer healthy frozen meals.
Alternatively, you can scout out healthy freezer meals at the store. And analyse any nutrition label for that matter, using one simple rule. It’s called the 5 and 20 rule. When reading any nutrition label, take a look at the percentage column. See the estimated percentage of each nutrient in relation to a 2,000 calorie diet.
If a food provides 5% or less of a nutrient, we consider it low in that nutrient. When a label shows 20% or more of a nutrient, we consider that food high in that nutrient. Use this rule to look for foods low in added sugar, saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium. While also you search for foods high in protein, natural carbohydrates (which excludes added sugar), poly- and monounsaturated fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
Overcoming Eating Out
In conclusion, eating out takes away from one’s physical, financial, and mental health. The steps taken to overcome a habit of eating out will vary from person to person. Sometimes the alternative choices provided may overlap until one finds their desired routine. One that sets them on the path to success with a nutrition plan.
Focus on making choices that are one percent better each day in order to overcome the toll of eating out. Observe how quickly you begin to feel better and more mentally strong! Thanks for reading!
Laurens Fit Crew
