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Fast food is cheap and convenient.
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But hidden in between the burgers and tacos are some "healthy" options: salads, grilled chicken, yogurts, oatmeal, power burritos.
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Doesn't sound too bad, right?
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I spent a week eating nothing but these "healthy" fast foods and I lost six-and-a-half pounds.
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But even though I lost about a pound a day, it didn't really go well.
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I live in New York City, a place with every possible food you could want.
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Eating healthy here, it's a breeze.
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But across America, there are more than 200,000 fast food joints, and they're bringing in more than $200 billion a year in sales.
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And no matter where you go, you're never far from a place like McDonald's or Taco Bell.
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But in recent years, consumers want better, healthier choices, and the traditional fast food places have been losing customers to those fast casual healthy options.
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The rules were pretty simple.
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Eat every major meal at a national fast food chain and stick to the healthy options.
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McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts, Subway, and Chick-fil-A; nothing but them for a week.
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Yeah, I lost almost seven pounds, but let's take a close look at the numbers.
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On a normal day, I'm eating around 2,500 calories.
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An adult man should be having about 2,400 to 2,600 calories a day.
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But on this fast food plan, my calories plummeted.
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Most of these meals came in under 400 calories, and that was one of my first problems.
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I'd eat and just a couple hours later, I was starving.
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And I had days when I didn't eat more than 1,000 calories.
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Now, some of these meals were really good.
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My favorite was this grilled chicken market salad from Chick-fil-A.
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It had blueberries, strawberries, apples; it was delicious and it was actually healthy.
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However, a lot of the other salads from Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy's were loaded with salt, often more than 50% of what I needed for the entire day, from a salad.
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In fact, excess salt was a problem the entire week.
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I thought I had hit the jackpot with Taco Bell's al Fresco menu.
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They take off all the cheese and mayo-based sauces and replace it with lettuce and pico de gallo.
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One night I got tacos, another night I got a power cantina burrito, and these were meals with more protein than usual.
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So, I felt like I was getting enough food.
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They were good, too good.
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It was all salt.
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In fact, just one burrito had almost as much salt as I needed in just one day.
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The American Heart Association says we should limit our sodium to about 2,300 milligrams a day, but the ideal is closer to 1,500 milligrams a day, especially for a person like me with high blood pressure.
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But if you look at my sodium intake, it was high every day.
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Yet I was barely getting the calories I needed.
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If I wanted to keep the sodium down, I was starving.
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If I wanted to feel full, salt through the roof.
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You see, that's an issue in the fast food industry.
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Wendy's even acknowledges on their website that there's going to be a trade-off between salt and flavor.
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It was weird.
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I didn't feel healthy at all throughout the week, even though I was eating healthy foods and losing weight.
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And on the last day, I had this massive headache that was just infuriating.
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These places, they're supposed to be tasty, cheap, and convenient.
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But it wasn't cheap.
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Every healthy option was expensive, but left me hungry.
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For eight grilled nuggets and this tiny kale salad at Chick-fil-A, $12.
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For the power Mediterranean salad at Wendy's, it was almost $8.
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Yet I could get a cheeseburger, nuggets, fries, and a soda for only $4.
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That brings me to another problem.
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Walk into McDonald's and you get hit with that sweet, sweet french fry smell, and I had to get a salad.
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Would I recommend this to anyone?
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Nope, unless you're stuck on the road with no other options.
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Though there was a bright spot: breakfast at Subway.
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They have these egg-white-and-cheese sandwiches, which I got covered in spinach and peppers.
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And let me tell you, it was good.
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But after all this, I just want a cheeseburger.