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  • Fast food is cheap and convenient.

  • But hidden in between the burgers and tacos are some "healthy" options: salads, grilled chicken, yogurts, oatmeal, power burritos.

  • Doesn't sound too bad, right?

  • I spent a week eating nothing but these "healthy" fast foods and I lost six-and-a-half pounds.

  • But even though I lost about a pound a day, it didn't really go well.

  • I live in New York City, a place with every possible food you could want.

  • Eating healthy here, it's a breeze.

  • 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.

  • And no matter where you go, you're never far from a place like McDonald's or Taco Bell.

  • 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.

  • The rules were pretty simple.

  • Eat every major meal at a national fast food chain and stick to the healthy options.

  • McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts, Subway, and Chick-fil-A; nothing but them for a week.

  • Yeah, I lost almost seven pounds, but let's take a close look at the numbers.

  • On a normal day, I'm eating around 2,500 calories.

  • An adult man should be having about 2,400 to 2,600 calories a day.

  • But on this fast food plan, my calories plummeted.

  • Most of these meals came in under 400 calories, and that was one of my first problems.

  • I'd eat and just a couple hours later, I was starving.

  • And I had days when I didn't eat more than 1,000 calories.

  • Now, some of these meals were really good.

  • My favorite was this grilled chicken market salad from Chick-fil-A.

  • It had blueberries, strawberries, apples; it was delicious and it was actually healthy.

  • 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.

  • In fact, excess salt was a problem the entire week.

  • I thought I had hit the jackpot with Taco Bell's al Fresco menu.

  • They take off all the cheese and mayo-based sauces and replace it with lettuce and pico de gallo.

  • One night I got tacos, another night I got a power cantina burrito, and these were meals with more protein than usual.

  • So, I felt like I was getting enough food.

  • They were good, too good.

  • It was all salt.

  • In fact, just one burrito had almost as much salt as I needed in just one day.

  • 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.

  • But if you look at my sodium intake, it was high every day.

  • Yet I was barely getting the calories I needed.

  • If I wanted to keep the sodium down, I was starving.

  • If I wanted to feel full, salt through the roof.

  • You see, that's an issue in the fast food industry.

  • Wendy's even acknowledges on their website that there's going to be a trade-off between salt and flavor.

  • It was weird.

  • I didn't feel healthy at all throughout the week, even though I was eating healthy foods and losing weight.

  • And on the last day, I had this massive headache that was just infuriating.

  • These places, they're supposed to be tasty, cheap, and convenient.

  • But it wasn't cheap.

  • Every healthy option was expensive, but left me hungry.

  • For eight grilled nuggets and this tiny kale salad at Chick-fil-A, $12.

  • For the power Mediterranean salad at Wendy's, it was almost $8.

  • Yet I could get a cheeseburger, nuggets, fries, and a soda for only $4.

  • That brings me to another problem.

  • Walk into McDonald's and you get hit with that sweet, sweet french fry smell, and I had to get a salad.

  • Would I recommend this to anyone?

  • Nope, unless you're stuck on the road with no other options.

  • Though there was a bright spot: breakfast at Subway.

  • They have these egg-white-and-cheese sandwiches, which I got covered in spinach and peppers.

  • And let me tell you, it was good.

  • But after all this, I just want a cheeseburger.

Fast food is cheap and convenient.

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