Hi, I’m M 18 175lbs. I have always been pretty skinny/medium weight my whole life. When I was younger I lived in a town that didn’t have any fast food. About 5-6 years ago I moved to a big city and when I did that’s when I started eating fast food. Gradually more and more. Now recently it’s been pretty bad. Fast food is almost all I eat now. And I’m absolutely sick and tired of it. It tastes good but it generally makes me feel terrible and it’s hard on the bank. It’s hard to stop though. It feels like it’s made me repulsed by regular at home foods I’m just wondering does anyone think fasting would help or anything else?
I think fasting would help. What happens when you eat loads of fast food is that your dopamine receptors get downgraded from the vast amounts of sugar and refined carbs and so on. Fasting for a few days will give your body some time to reset itself from this overload. If you start eating higher-quality unprocessed foods after your fast, your taste receptors will have reset themselves to a point where even carrots taste sweet (that’s how it’s supposed to be). However, your very first meal after a multiple day fast should be small an concist of easily digestable foods, like an egg or some cooked vegetables. I also recommend looking up Eric Berg, Jason Fung and Robert Lustig on Youtube.
It’s hard to go from all to nothing, and fast food addiction can be serious, so I understand why you’re struggling. Fasting can be helpful, but it might not solve the issue in a lot of cases. I think the first step would be learning to cook at home if you already don’t know how. Learn to address why you want fast food most: because it is convenient or because it is very tasty? If it is convenience, meal prep might work for you so that you just have to pull something out of the fridge/freezer to microwave quickly. If it is the taste, make mock fast food at home. Learn how to fry chicken, grill good burgers, assemble burrito bowls, make french fries, or whatever your favorite is. It may not be the healthiest starting out, but at least you know what is in your food and can control the sodium/sugar/preservative levels. Then if you want to clean it up even more from there, you can swap out frying for grilling or air frying, fatty meat for lean, add in more greens, go sugar free, etc. It 100% sucks going from an entirely fast food diet to eating completely healthy, and you will be miserable, and it probably won’t be sustainable. Mixing this method with intermittent fasting can be helpful because if you have set times to eat, then you are less likely to pull into a drive thru on impulse outside of your eating window.
I don’t mean this to sound harsh, so please don’t take it that way. But…you’re an adult. It’s time to use some will power and self-discipline and just say “No”. Your body and your bank account will thank you.
Alternatively, if you continue down this path, when you get to be my age in 20 years, you’ll weigh 375 lbs, have to use a CPAP every night, and be absolutely miserable.