Fast Food ConfessionalConfessions of a Fast Food Addict

I don’t want to be too presumptuous at 1:55 in the afternoon, but I have not been to any form of drive through today. I did go for a smoothie after my workout, because I’m out of banannas and chocolate soymilk. Typically I would make them myself with Whey Protein after working out to give the body an easy source of protein and carbs.

I plan on having David Stanhope over at The Whey Protein King write a guest blog post on the benefits of whey protein. My own recommendation is that you don’t take a workout smoothie or shake unless you workout. Because the sources of protein and carbs are really quick to absorb (unlike something like beans), therefore all that carb calories will go to your ass like a bag of Doritos.

OK I’ll be a little presumptuous, and in the spirit of tomorrows election (Go Obama), at 2:05 PM I’m calling it a small Monday victory for me and defeat to fast food.

Now let’s try to string a whole week of these together.

While I had a successful day the other day, yesterday was a bit of a wash. I was on the road quite a bit going to a bunch of schools for construction repair evaluations. It was not really planned to be out for so long. I had no real plan for when my hunger made it’s presence known. So I stopped at a Jack in the Box on the way from one school to the next. I must say however that I spent only $4 which is about half of what I normally pay for a meal from anywhere.

At JITB my normal take would be a Sourdough Jack, large Fries, large Dr Pepper, and 2 tacos. Sometimes I would even get a Oreo cookie shake. All of that costs between $8 and $10. Sickening when you think about the money that is tossed away eating fast food. So to keep things under control by getting a Jumbo Jack meal was encouraging. And at nights end I had a hard and fast workout with my soccer team. Normally I’m the goalie, but we played indoor last night so I got a chance to run my fat ass around and try to score. And I actually did get a few rare goals. So I probably burned all those calories I ate earlier in the day.

But today I’m sequestering myself. I may go to the gym and sit in the sauna and hot-tub to nurse my sore body, but I plan on staying here for the most part to resist the temptation of eating out. I’ve got calls and some invoicing to do today, and I plan to make my lunch here.

This could be key to success. Any thoughts?

Things have been tough. I imagine that if you are one of the ten readers, who read this thing, you know that since I haven’t written anything in quite sometime, I’ve been in that downward spiral I have mentioned before. Well, today was different. I managed to get through the day without going to the drive-through!!!

A few factors played into that:

1. The two hours in the gym yesterday.
2. The terrible loss my soccer team suffered as a result of me failing to block the very easy shot on goal in the last two minutes of our game on Sunday (I’m the goalie)
3. A rebirth of my inner artist.

I’ll spend some time to expand on the last thought as the others are pretty straightforward.

A layer of complacent dormancy has set in and shrouded my waking life for the last couple of years. It’s lifted now and then to reveal a nice view of the outside, but never enough to see the brilliance I once saw before. Now, complacency is a deceptive and cunning creature that slowly creeps in so that you get comfortable with it gradually, but never so much that you are alarmed by it’s presence. As this complacency sets in, everything seems to look as it did before. Colors seem the same, experiences seem the same, and life seems the same.

And then, if your lucky, you wake up and see that everything is really not what it was.

That has happened to me in many facets of my life. The one that is most apparent to me is my art. I have been photographing since I was a wee child of 14 years old. I’ve learned from the best, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, (all through books of course - Although I have met Ansel’s Daughter in Law). The craft and my artistic expression means more to me than anything. I think it’s important for people that don’t understand, that an artist is merely a conduit for producing the art that comes from “another place.” I don’t presume to say where that comes from. But the art that is produced is above and beyond my explanation. As of late that conduit has become rusty and dulled, probably due to suburban living, and television.

But that’s the same with my physical self, and my eating. The TV has been nuking my creative mind, while it has been rendering me a god damned potato! The inability to be honest with myself and my craft has left me a much wider shadow of my former self.

Over at my blog on William Bay Photography, I am devoting myself to brutal honesty with myself and my readers. If it costs me potential clients, I’m OK with that. Because I would much rather lead a life that is true to myself and my art. And I would expect the people that appreciate my work to respect that.

All of this can all be looked at as an all encompassing metaphor for everything my life, from my failing marriage to my weight and fast food addiction. With respect to my addiction, each day I say to myself “today is going to be the day I get through without hitting up something for lunch.” But it never happens. That’s because I’m never true to myself and my goals, my aspirations. It’s all about what what would taste good right now.

Well it’s got to stop. And I can only see that right now is by marrying the complacency I have sank into, with the fast food addiction. If I can see how those two are connected and how they affect one another, maybe I will give it up completely.

While today was a small victory, I will have to lose at least 35pounds and have my first exhibit in five years for a true victory.

I really just have to begin by saying that it is a beautiful Fall day here in Austin. I am outside on my laptop with all of our animals enjoying this cool day in the backyard. We had a rain storm pass by in the middle of the night that dropped half an inch on our very thirsty lawn. It is has been such a hot and dry summer that this change in the weather has a lot of people very happy.

Well, as some readers have noticed I haven’t posted anything as of late. And as you would guess it’s because I’ve been In The Bag. Yes, in the McDonalds, Jack in the Box, and Whataburger bags. It all started a couple of weeks ago when my wife wanted a cheeseburger on our way to some friends. We were going to eat dinner there but it was a ways off. I got a cheeseburger too. That was the downfall. After that it was fast food at least every other day.

Well tomorrow I am going to get back on my slow carb eating style, and slurping down the coconut oil. I have been going to the gym and swimming and sitting in the sauna. It’s basically been keeping my weight steady. And while I plan on upping my swim lengths to a mile and walking for half an hour each day, the fast food is still keeping me from optimum health.

I find it easy when I have stuff for lunch at home to skip the fast food meals. Plus with a tight month it’ll be harder to justify running to Whata-burger.

Speaking of swimming, I found this cool group that swims in between Greek Islands. I though that that might be fun to do sometime. I have done half-mile long open water swims before, but that would be crazy long.

And kind of old news but did you know that Michael Phelps eat 12,000 calories a day to feed his energy requirements? Here is a video that shows you what he eats everyday.

I will start this off by saying that I don’t care if High Fructose Corn Syrup is a poison or a relatively safe food product. I have generally tried to shy away from HFCS,(although that is very difficult to do when I have eaten as many Combo #1’s as I have), but the real issue has never been addressed. And that is, do the chemical, and enzymatic processes required to make HCFS have an adverse affect on a persons health aside from a typical sugar?

I have been searching for real concrete proof. Real science. I haven’t been able to obtain any studies so far. I’d also point out that the website HCFS Facts is actually owned by the Corn Refiners Association.

If any of you know real studies that conclusively show that HFCS causes health issues above and beyond regular sugar (sucrose), please let me know.

I’m almost to the point where I want to buy a bunch of white mice and and see the affects on them with raw sugar, refined sugar (in syrup form), and HFCS in my backyard.

The Corn Refiners Association has recently run ads claiming that HFCS is totally fine as a product. I’m willing to give that to them until I see hard evidence. But what I must take up arms about is the claim that it is “fine in moderation!!!”

-If you go to the grocery store and pick up anything that is not in the health food section, I dare you to find any less than 75% of the store that does not contain HFCS! The entire food industry is pumping us fat with the very thing that the Corn Refiners are telling us is fine when used sparingly.

Now if HFCS is just as safe as sugar, than we need to force our food companies to eliminate the use of HCFS and or sugar in our food products in such quantities.

Here is a video from someone that is just as upset with the moderation line…

High Fructose Corn Syrup - Impossible to be used in moderation

Here, as a bonus, are a bunch of drinks that all will have quite a bit of HFCS.

People, the market place will be one of the best ways to correct this overuse of sugar/HFCS in our foods. Start spreading the word, and do not buy foods that contain HFCS.

I had this banging interview today to do some contract project managment for the local school district today. It has been a long time since I have felt like I have been taken seriously in Architecture. In some respects I feel like a cast-off as a result of the way I approached my Architectural career, you see the common method in becoming a licensed Architect is to complete a 5 year degree and 3 years of work experience. What most institutionalized Architects and Architectural offices don’t understand is that you can obtain 8 years of work experience and become licensed as well, which is teh approach I took.

It is definitely the less traveled road, (which speaks to my against the grain nature), and I have had a bear of a time trying to be taken seriously in job searches here in Texas as a result of it.

The interview was so positive. I really connected with my interviewers and can really tell that they truly understand what the importance of Architecture to the communities that utilize the structures that we design and build. They also saw past the pretensions of having a degree, and it allowed them to see the real depth of experience I have in this field which extends a full ten years.

I was so excited that I felt a celebratory Wendy’s burger, fries and a Dr. Pepper was in order!!!

Now I can sit here and try to justify the reasons for it. But does it really make it right? Is this the kind of thinking which keeps the behavior alive?

Should fast food be a reward, or does it enable the same mindset from when I was a child getting fast food as a treat? In which case I will look for any small victory to get that reward.

I wish I had some answers. For myself and for anyone else reading that confronts the same issues. Maybe it has to do with silencing the compulsion.

The burger was damn good though. And I really did feel respected walking out of that interview.

As far as treating yourself… I think it all depends on your comfort level and your goals. Maybe with my goals (health and finances), I shouldn’t have.

I’m going to go swim 1/2 a mile and sit in the sauna now.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment.

I have no problem making this site monetized, I don’t even have a problem making it known that I monetize the site. It would be nice to make a few bucks for my writing and candor. The problem is finding the right way to monetize while maintaining integrity and upholding the values on which I began writing here in the first place just a week ago.

I came upon my first speed bump in that respect yesterday when I added Google Adsense to the end of each post on my blog. I quickly decided against it as the first results popped up. You can clearly see in the screengrabs below why I might not welcome the ads.

While I fully understand that the content of the site speaks of fast food, McDonalds, Wendy’s, etc. The context in which they are spoken about is in a negative way.

Now there may be more Adsense saavy people out there, (granted, I signed up and put the code in my site - wham, bam, thank you ma’am), who may know some secrets such as a way to exclude certain types of advertisers. But is the norm? Is this the powerful Adsense that people have praised? Aren’t they called contextual ads? If the ads to not reflect the context of the site, in this case a negative view on fast food, than why are they called contextual ads?

If any one out there has some insight into this I would love to hear from you. On the same hand, if any of you reading have suggestions for appropriate ways to earn some revenue while maintaining respect for the readers, myself and the integrity of this site, I would greatly appreciate it.

For the readers that did see the ads and were either offended or confused as to my motives - I do apologize. This site is meant to be for inspiration (for you and me), and not a sell out link farm where McDonalds will pay me a quarter for each person that clicks through.

I thought I would elaborate some on depression, from my last post, and discuss the cyclical nature, or to be more precise, the spiraling nature of fast food and it’s roll in depression.

I’m sure we’ve all been down before, whether that be from a breakup, or losing a job, or a death in the family. We often turn to loved ones to comfort us. But we also turn to food. Food somehow nurtures us in a way that a person can’t. And while there may be a link between depression and obesity through chemical imbalances, it’s the foods which provide us with that special kind of nurturing that really put the pounds on.

This all makes sense from a child development point of view. If you think back to when you were younger and you fell off your bike while learning to ride (or some similar circumstance). Most parents, after they bandaged up your skinned-up knee, would give you a cookie and say “This will make you feel better.” And as a human being, all we really want in life is to feel good. So we take the “cookie.” Fast food is my “cookie.”

The “cookie effect” has become imprinted in our human make-up to the point where the “cookie” equates happiness. The problem is that it contributes to what makes us unhappy - our increasing girth, and diminishing health.

Fast food as the “cookie” only exacerbates the problems. There are a number of reasons why:

• Fast food is nutritionally deficient which causes imbalances (nutritionally and chemically, which inturn cause emotional imbalances - which makes an argument for teh article posted above).
• A number of fast food proprietors have been accused of using addictive chemicals in their foods to make a person want more.
• As with any dependency, there is usually a low after getting your “fix.” Most people after eating their comfort food will be in the same low place, or lower, as they were before.
• If you are fat to begin with, the fact that you just consumed a bunch of empty calories, and likely to put that food in your problem areas is depressing in itself.
• The financial aspect of being out $5-10 every meal. The costs add up and reduce the amount that you have in your bank account every month.

I’m not an expert in kicking the habit, I struggle myself in this everyday. But I do know that being aware of the underlying source of our problems is key to achieving positive results in life. If the source of our problems as fast food junkies is the hurt feelings of a child, than we can recognize that each time we hop in the car to go to the drive through.

The recognition is just the start though. In order to stop the behavior we have to grow from that hurt child into an adult that can logically choose to not go to McDonalds or Jack in the Box. The reasons for breaking the fast food habit might be anything.

• You may have lost 5 pounds and not want to gain it back.
• You may have managed to go 3 weeks without eating fast food and are starting to feel really good physically.
• You just went to the gym, and eating out would destroy everything you just worked out for.
• Maybe you promised your loved one that you wouldn’t.

You can see that knowing why you are addicted to fast food, and actually kicking the habit have nothing in common. But if you know why you are addicted, you can begin to take the responsibility of your life and eating habits into your own hands, and out of the hands of a child with a skinned knee.

After high school and into the  little college I attended, and subsequently into my professional career in Architecture, I moved out and rarely cooked. Instead I would do the easy thing and go to Burger King or the local taco shop for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

At my first office I would often stop by a Mexican donut shop and pick up an apple fritter. Admittedly, I still sneak one at the grocery store and eat it before I get home. Without the daily swimming I used to do, my clothes began to get that snug feeling, and then they just stopped fitting altogether.

At one point I began surfing again, but my surf sessions were more casual paddle-outs on a longboard and weren’t intense workouts, so despite this little activity I continued to grow.

190 Pounds became the new mark, and then 200. Very discouraging situation to be in. But, yet I continued my poor eating habits. It wasn’t that I dislike cooking, because I love to. I think it was more of a laziness.

The most impactful time came due to a hard time in my life around the time I was 24. Despite not being a psycologist I can safely say that I was in the depths of a clinical depression. I will spare the details as they are many and varied, and can very well fill an entire book, but the true spiral had begun.

In this 6 month period of depression, aside from my duties at work, my biggest decisions of the day were: Where should I eat? (My options were: Carls Jr, Jack in the Box, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, or the ubiquitous taco shop). The food became comfort, but at the expense of my weight and health, which in turn spawned more depression and eating. At the depths of my depression there were often paper and plastic bags scattered across my coffee table where I ate. If they were in the way I would just push them off to the side and carry on with my meal unaffected. I would pull my shit together occasionally and take a large kitchen bag and collect the mess of fast food branded bags, styrofoam boxes, Big Mac containers, and 32oz Dr Pepper cups, and do the walk of shame out to the dumpster.

At the end of this depression I weighed 230 lbs and was officially obese.

A short time after that I developed a couple really good friendships, got out of the funk, started to work out a little more, and did a fast. The fast helped me drop a lot of weight, but not the underlying issue of my fast food addiction. After the fast I weighed 180 pounds and tried to eat well, but the habit started to creep back in.

The real problems began after I took a job offer at a new Architect’s office. They were paying me $15,000 more than I was making at my previous office, and along with the stress of a new office, new system and greater responsibilities, I had a superior that was in my opinion “not fit to practice Architecture.” I struggled to balance on the fence between doing the right thing and holding onto my job. While doing so, and while eating Del Taco every morning, I developed Asthma! This seems to be a combination of the stress and the terrible food I was eating.

I left that position after only five months and immediately my health rebounded. But yet again, I never changed my eating habit. Looking at the pattern I can see some powerful insight into myself; my laziness is a crutch that supports my addiction, and that my depression fueled the fire of more depression by putting myself in a situation where I was unhappy with my body, and as a result ate more for comfort. This is a pattern that I have not yet broke.

In my next post I’ll discuss what a year in Thailand has done for me and life back in the U.S. up until now. Thank you for reading.

I’ve recently found myself pretty obsessed with personal finance. Coming to the realization that in order to get out of debt I was going to have to make some drastic changes. Through my “Money Makeover” I’ve found a pretty remarkable personal finance tool called Mint.
It takes all your online accounts and provides you a quick overview of all of them all at once. In my opinion it’s a much better solution than Quicken because it is web based, very fast, and it doesn’t give me stuff I don’t need like check writing. One of the best features is the Trends sections which detail your spending habits. It’s been a great tool to see where my wife and I spend our money.

Logging in today I noticed that despite my self-mandate to eliminate the spending, I’ve already spent $47 on fast food!!! You can see, on the pie chart I grabbed from my Mint account, how much money I have spent on fast food compared to groceries. I’m already on target to spend more than I did last month as you can see on the chart below.

I think it’s quite obvious what kind of impact that eating fast food, whether your addicted or not. If you look at just the last three months you can see that I’ve spent over $100 each month.

Considering that I eat much less fast food now than when I lived alone, the financial impact to my life over the years has been crippling. Without doing a lot of estimating and math I would have to assume that tens of thousands of dollars of my paychecks have been handed over to Ronald McDonald and friends.

And in return I have received diminished health and issues with weight.

Imagine having that money back… I think I have to imagine keeping that money in the future.