Second Helping Toolbox
Interesting Alternatives to Fast Food and TV: “Maintenance Predictors” Part 2 of 3

No, fast food is no toy. Remember that even fast food's offering healthier options. But why rely on the same things that helped get you fat? There's more interesting choices available to break the cycle.

Continuing to overview the leading maintenance predictors, our next two are a little more straightforward staying with it — how to stay with it and make an interesting life despite it all’s our entire site in microcosm.

The next two, as some of our comments noted, are more behavioral (don’t do this) than conceptual (keep at it)

Less fast food consumption

Now, now, don’t say “Well, duh!” In attempts to stay contemporary, many fast food chains are marketing or creating “lite” menus and more healthful dishes. While they’re a great last resort, the point is you can diet and still easily rely on the same restaurants that contributed to your weight. Again, flip sides of the coin. We’re suggesting to trade one coin for a better one.

Not because fast food is unhealthy and leading to weight regain, but because there’s more options to be well fed, on the go, without thought that make for a more interesting quality of life.

In many ways, fast food is making this easier: it’s neither fast, and we already know it’s not real food. Value menu aside, a full meal from many fast food chain is approaching casual-dining prices.

• Plan contingencies and plan ahead | Keep food that won’t melt in the car (see our guides on protein bars and travel for suggestions). Most eating methods encourage some form of satiety-satisfying foods (be it fiber, protein, or both). If you know traveling is a trigger for you, filling up before you drive helps make hunger a nonissue.

• Look Around and Pay Attention: Not to your willpower, but for a more interesting life than what you had | Yes yes, marketing’s a powerful tool. We see a big M and think “Nom nom nom.”  Most restaurants occur in clusters; beyond fast food, see what else is there. A promising mom and pop restaurant? A local beloved eatery? A grocery store with quality pre-prepared food? Cost vary, but all are viable options. Simple action: Ask yourself: “What’s a more interesting option?” Whether you cook or dine out, why not make food an adventure, not a controlled substance or a substance controlling you? They’re flip sides of the same thing!

• Pre-determine three-four restaurants, with dishes you like and work for your eating methods, and call ahead a to-go order | Wherever you may travel in your city, have a restaurant in mind in that neighborhood you know you can count on. Calling ahead on the road and picking up your menu item of choice is almost as fast — and usually faster — than fast food.

Less TV viewing

*Laughs* One of these days, if you behave very well and invite many, many people to our Facebook Discussion Page, I’ll tell you all The Marcia Clark Story. But suffice to say, I stopped watching TV with the OJ trial. Thank god — study after study proclaims the couch as the throne of mindless eating. Internet surfing runs a close second for me personally.

Why not consider one of those “What I’ve always wanted to do if only I could lose weight” activities. You don’t have the weight as an excuse anymore, only what the weight was disguising all this time.

Personally, I developed a taste for leaving the house (gasp!) and learning cooking. I found a bar I enjoy hanging out in, concerts, meetings, coffee shops, museum trips, reading, etc. If the point of losing weight was to change your life in some way, why stop at your waist? As we discuss often on this site, the fear of the unknown is powerful — and for the lifelong obese, everything is unknown when you lose weight. Overcoming those apprehensions and fears in your life — not just your eating/exercise — is what makes weight loss so profoundly powerful.

That might sound like wishy-washy self-help, but it has a practical application: ditching foods that encouraged a life you didn’t want is an achievement. Ditching activities that encouraged a life you didn’t want actually gives you something to push toward, fight for, and celebrate than whatever your scale or waist says.

And making the scale not mean anything about you beyond a number is the entire point, is it not?

Russ Lane created Second Helping after going from 350 to 155 pounds while working as a food writer in the Carolinas. Learn more at the Team Second Helping page, and be sure to sign up for our newsletter Under Maintenance.