How to Stop Eating Fast Food

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Read the Transcript:

How to Stop Eating Fast Food

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life podcast. Today, I’m going to share with you the steps for how to stop eating fast food. By fast food, I mean any sort of takeout food that you’d like to stop eating for whatever reasons you have.

It may be physical health reasons, or it may be that fast food or takeout is getting in the way of you achieving your weight loss goals. This is actually the first step: determining what you want your goal to be and why. Do you want to stop eating fast food forever, only during travels, or just once a month?

It can be whatever you’d like it to be. Then, why do you want to achieve this goal? I strongly recommend writing down the answers to these questions so that it’s not just floating around in your head.

You can get really solid and specific. Your reason why is very personal to you and could be anything. Think of as many different reasons as you possibly can.

The more reasons why you want to stop eating fast food, the more motivation you’ll have. This motivation will fuel your goal of breaking a fast food habit or stopping it permanently.

My husband Paul told me that when he was married previously, he and his wife at the time ate a lot of takeout and fast food. He always had heartburn, he was gaining weight and just not feeling well. He had lots of different reasons he wanted to stop, and that was excellent fuel for him. He was successful and he noticed that the less he ate it, the less desire he had for it.

Next, with any behavior you want to stop, you need to decrease the triggers that prompt the behavior.

In this case, the behavior is getting and eating takeout food or fast food. A trigger can be something like seeing a fast food commercial, driving by a fast food place, or seeing an app on your phone for your favorite takeout place. It could be someone asking if you’d like to order takeout with them.

The trigger could also be stress, boredom, or a tight schedule, making you think you need something quick to eat for dinner. These triggers create an urge or desire that compels you to order and eat the takeout or fast food. There are lots of ways to decrease triggers, which is how I help my clients in my one-on-one coaching program, Eat with Intention.

But for the sake of keeping it simple for this podcast episode, here are a couple of things you can do on your own. You can remove any apps from your phone that might be a visual trigger for you. This also makes the behavior more difficult to do.

Of course, you can get the app again or go on the website to order, or drive to the physical location. But this extra effort creates a pause, making your brain less likely to order the takeout or fast food. It creates space for you to decide what you’d really like to do intentionally, rather than automatically.

Breaking bad eating habits is all about increasing awareness and being intentional. You want to make a decision rather than having a knee-jerk reaction, which happens when you’re in the habit of doing something automatically. This automatic reaction is why it can feel so out of control.

Another way to decrease triggers is to change your route if you typically drive by your favorite fast food place on your way home. This little change can help break the habit of automatically stopping for fast food. It’s a simple thing you can do on your own without my help.

The next step after decreasing triggers is making the unwanted behavior harder to do. The examples I gave of decreasing triggers also make the behavior harder to do. It doesn’t make it impossible, but it does make it less easy.

Additionally, make the alternative behavior you’d rather do easier. If you want to stop eating fast food as frequently, have quick, easy alternatives available. Remember, fast food is quick and easy, so your alternative should be quick and easy too.

This could be having some frozen dinners available at home. These might not be drastically healthier than fast food, but even if they’re a bit healthier and help you follow through on your intention of not stopping for fast food as often, they are a good alternative for now.

Next, with any behavior you want to change, make sure you reward yourself. Fast food provides a reward in that it is quick, easy, and pleasurable, usually tasting good and giving you a dopamine hit. Since you’re decreasing fast food, you need to reward yourself to encourage your brain to continue decreasing it.

This can be in the form of telling yourself you did a great job and noting how you feel. Maybe you feel successful that you didn’t stop for takeout today. Really lean into that feeling of success and give yourself a pat on the back.

Or your reward might be listening to a guilty pleasure podcast or reading a guilty pleasure magazine. What’s important is not to reward yourself with food. We want to break the habit of linking food and reward.

Otherwise, you’ll use food as a reward for many things, leading to new eating habits, potential weight gain, or other health issues.

So just a quick recap:

1. Write down your specific goal and reasons why. As many as you can.
2. Decrease any visual triggers like removing any fast food apps, throwing out menus, or driving a different route.
3. Make the behavior harder to do, which is what decreasing those visual triggers helps with. You can also make the alternative behavior you WANT to do, easier, like having quick and easy meal options available.
4. Reward yourself for following through, but make sure it’s not a food reward.

So, that was the quick and dirty on how to stop eating fast food. If you want further help with this, I can help you with my 1:1 coaching program. If you’re fed up with your eating habits and want to transform them, I’m your person.

I invite you to book your free consultation with the link in the episode description or right on my website (below!). Thanks for listening, take care, and I’ll talk with you next week.