Road Food and a Diet

I know, they really don't go together. It is always better to shop and make your food from scratch, as you can get a better price and better nutrition.

Nonetheless sometimes you just want something "bad".

I fit these into my diet plan and do appreciate stopping for a Fresco Chicken Soft Taco at Taco Bell, or a breakfast burrito at McDonald's. There are a couple of tricks to keeping your calorie count low when you make these stops.

The main one for me is to have a ready choice when you arrive. Where I live, menu boards have to have the calorie count posted if a restaurant is of a certain size, if it not, you have to go by an educated guess, so sometimes larger chains are easier. I created a small spreadsheet of common fast food joints and their low calorie options, linked below. It is by no means complete, as I did not include much over 300 calories and nothing I don't care for.
Please note, there are no fast food salads worth mentioning. Either they are too high in calories, or will be once you put anything on them. If I wanted rabbit food, I would get a bag and packet of dressing at the supermarket for far less than the cost of a fast food salad. I really like the single serving packets of dressing you can find at WinCo and I will add a Carl Budding 100 calorie turkey package to make it more interesting.

My favorite fast food go to is the McDonalds Sausage Breakfast Burrito. For only a buck, you get a decent amount of food and only 300 calories. (If you are counting where the calories are coming from, forget fast food anyway.)

Here is the result of my short research:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Oh1ukF4mSpqHtyjZb4W3XoUJUhdoddJJBqqABDWIk6Q/edit?usp=sharing

Most of the data was gleaned from https://fastfoodnutrition.org/.
What they did not have I used the company web site.

Other great resources are Calorie King and Eat This, Not That. (Both are also available in book form.)

On a related note, I suggest keeping a calorie log. There are apps for them out there, I use the one that is part of my FitBit app. But I have used My Fitness Pal in the past.