Seriously...I'm SO READY to just leave my house and go out into the freezing cold for some freaking chicken nuggets and french fries. I'm SO frustrated with myself...

I'm a total addict. Fast food is what I love, it's the reason that I got as big as I did...I have plenty of food in my house, healthy food that I could eat and stay on plan...but I keep trying to find ways to get AROUND it. Excuses to get fast food, or even ways to fit it INTO my diet...There have been days where I just eat ONE MEAL, fast food, and not eat anything else so that I don't go over on my points....

I'm struggling right now...I'm cold and I'm hungry and I want some McDonalds...and I know I don't NEED it and I know that I have other food around the house that I could eat that would be much better for me...it's like my brain is telling me "DON'T DO IT! IT'S NOT WHAT YOU WANT!"....but something in the back of my mind is trying to take over and make me give in and go get that yummy warm amazing fast food...

Why is it that I think it's so good? I know most people say it tastes like crap...I know a lot of people have no trouble staying away from it...WHY is it that I'm like this? WHY do I HAVE to be addicted to fast food? It's so readily available, it's not illegal...it's not like they have rehab for fast food addicts...How am I supposed to be able to fight this?

Someone, please just stop me....the last thing I need is to gain again...I need to fight this addiction and I need to get past this. I HAVE to be stronger then this, I just don't know how

Your body is awesome, and you are awesome. Your body deserves much, much better than to be propped up with that quasi-food stuff we can get at MaccyD's. Really.

If you had the most beautiful and exquisite vase given to you by your best friend, would you fill it with muddy pond water and stick a down-on-its-luck dandilion in it? Of course not! You'd find a beautiful flower, change the water regularly, and add a good supplement to keep it fresh.

So why don't you do the same for your body? It won't let your personality shine through in the way you deserve to be radiated if it's filled with gunk.

Go into the kitchen and cook a proper meal. Then come back and tell us all about it

Step away from the car keys! Hands where I can see them!

Here's the deal. The only time to break this is right now. Not AFTER you eat the crap and feel terrible, but NOW!

Do whatever you have to do to keep yourself from going out for that junk. Drink 10 cups of tea, eat four string cheeses, have lowfat yogurt, play computer games, but DO NOT leave the house! Stay where you are!

Eventually, the day will be over, you will go to bed, and you will fall asleep. You may have to cry yourself to sleep, but you will manage it.

And tomorrow, let me tell you, tomorrow you are going to feel soooo much better than you would if you gave up and ate that crap.

The only way to get over it is to stop doing it. Really. Eventually you'll wonder why you even bothered about it. But only if you stay strong!

Hang in there!

Jay

I always find if I'm craving something awful (in my case, wanting to order and eat an entire pizza or get Chinese take-out), I get on my elliptical and stay on it for at least 15 minutes until I get some healthy exercise endorphins released to satisfy the craving. Because really, you're just craving the endorphin high you get from eating the fast food. Replace the craving with a better endorphin high.

I can completely identify! I think I can point to fast food as the source of a huge percentage of my excess fat. I had to go cold turkey. I didn't go near a fast food place for months. Then I decided I could incorporate grilled chicken sandwiches from Chikfila because they are 300 calories. But while I am a fan of moderation, I cannot have burgers and fries. They call to me in mass quantities! And I'm not certain if I had them again if I could stop.

I think you may just need to get tough with yourself and say NO. That stuff is bad news. You have to just cut it out of your life. Though it doesn't feel like it, the cravings do lessen a lot with time. Now if I could just get my cable company to stop running fast food ads that call to me...

Chicken nuggets? Aack. Can't you come up with anything better than that?
Those things are nasty. I don't know how they are made, but I can about imagine.

Left over parts and pieces, shoved in a big ole vat, water and salt, enough preservatives to pickle you and God knows what else and then it's all smooshed and gooshed and then it goes into some strange machine that squirts them onto an assembly line, where they fall into the breader and then another assembly line into the fryer, then flash froze.

Then packed, hauled, unloaded, into another freezer, then reconstituted into that lovely deep fat fried breaded combination of rubber and cardboard.
*shudder*

Heaven knows how many people have touched them after picking their nose, or scratching heaven only knows what. You have no idea what may have fallen into the smoosher, breader, fryer, freezer, etc. When was the last time any of those machines, fryers, etc. were cleaned?

There, that should get you over a craving for chicken nuggets.

These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan:

“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.

According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”

Just say no!

Thanks guys...but I'm still wanting them...even with everything shcirerf said, I STILL want them...

Maybe it's because it's TOM? idk...I've noticed the cravings always get WAY worse around TOM...and that used to be a huge excuse for fast food multiple times a day. If I was cramping, my boyfriend would go get me whatever I wanted...and I always got fast food. It made the cramps go away, it made me feel better...

If I eat it, I feel better...maybe that's why it's so hard to resist.

I do appreciate the support though, and I will probably be able to resist tonight because it's so damn cold outside...and I doubt that I'd want to go out, even to get fast food...but I don't know how I'll be able to fight this for the rest of my life...I'm so afraid this is going to be my downfall.

Maybe in moderation? Once a week? Once every two weeks? For me, if something is forbidden, I just want it that much more. If I allow myself to indulge occasionally, it seems that I handle it better. Maybe if I say I can have fast food once a month, and if there is a special occasion like a birthday or something...and no other times..

I don't know, thats just such a drastic change for me. Even with all this weight I've lost, I'm sure I've had fast food almost every week...sometimes multiple times a week...and I manage to fit it in and still lose weight...but I'm still SO ADDICTED!

Nice!

I do not eat fast food. I mean, if you really think about what's in it and how it's made, it become really unappetizing fairly quickly.

Besides, I'm a much better cook than the McD's fryer anyway.

Oh, and it's not just the chicken nuggets. I'd kill for some Whataburger...and I'd LOVE some Burger King...Cheeseburgers and French Fries and Burritos...ANYTHING...I just love fast food.


Edit: And the stuff thats in it doesn't gross me out....I've eaten tons of it and it hasn't killed me yet...idk. I shouldn't think about it like that, but I do.

The things I miss about Texas. Whenever I'm down there I'm always a little curious what it tastes like these days I haven't had it since I was a kid though.

I am a former ff junky. I think for me it was convenience more than anything, but that was part of the evolution. I bet if you cut back you will naturally lose the craving. The more I learned about the stuff I was consuming the less I wanted food that was such poor quality.

ETA: I've told this story before, but a couple of years ago I went through the Wendy's drive thru after a night of drinking with friends after not going for years. I ordered a jr cheeseburger. I got home, took one look at it and was so mad at how disgusting it looked that I threw it against the wall! Like I said, I can do better. It was just a pitiful and ugly burger.

I know the feeling totally. I was addicted to fast food at university and had it here two to three times a week. It's all well and good to say "don't go", but seriously, fast food is a addictive thing; your body craves it. It's all the crap they put in it to make it taste good: the sugar, the flavour, the sizzle, the salt, the crinkly packaging and the toys. Gotta love the toys.

Sounds like you're on a sugar-crash and having a bad one. Most of the things we eat nowadays are laden in sugar (the worst offenders are the low-cal, low-fat "healthy" snacks), but they also put it in fast foods and takeaways.

The only way to get over this is to not go. Two to three days is how long it takes to come off a sugar withdrawl (much like any drug, really) and another three weeks or so to come off the psychological withdrawl. It's impossible to never go back to fast food; I'll get a takeaway on occasion (the last one I had was so that I had to throw away the tortilla and everything in it, salvage the chicken and make a salad).

DivineFidelity YOU CAN GET OVER THIS! Keep repeating to yourself that you can do it. Self-talk your way through it. Do SOMETHING to keep your mind off of food. Write, read, draw, sew, exercise, reach out and slap someone... whatever it takes to stop thinking about it. To be stronger, you merely have to make up your mind to not want it. That's will-power. Self-discipline is what helps the will-power help you. You can do this, I know you can. You ARE a strong person, but having a weak moment. C'mon! Show yourself (and all of us) how strong a person you are!

So, what is it that's in fast food, that makes your cramps feel better?
Salt, fat? Something in one of those words you can't pronounce or spell?

If you could figure that out, you could make a better choice. Would a can of chicken noodle soup have the same affect? Or maybe a can of healthy chicken and rice soup from progesso or something.

Why don't you make your own burgers?

Eat more real food, and the imitation stuff will seem...well, like a poor imitation after a while.

Perhaps you could let yourself pick up something once or twice a week, like you suggest. I hear you on the not forbidding yourself anything thing. But on the other hand, if you want to lose weight, you're going to have to make some tough lifestyle choices - and a lifestyle where fast food is a staple is not one that's going to get you healthy, fit, lighter, or happy. Not really

This is what I sing when junk food beckons:

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance take,
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance.

A planet of playthings,
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
"The stars aren't aligned,
Or the gods are malign..."
Blame is better to give than receive.

Chorus
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.

There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand,
The cards were stacked against them; they weren't born in Lotusland.

All preordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate.
Kicked in the face,
You can't pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate.

Chorus

Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete.
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet.