By: Adana Lima

As you work towards your goal to become healthier, choosing foods which promote optimal wellness, one thing which can set you back is eating at a fast food restaurant.

When times get busy, though, you may find yourself needing a meal or snack, and so eating at a fast food place may be your only option.

Fortunately, if you know how to navigate through the fast food menu properly, eating there won’t completely ruin your diet.

Healthy Fast Food Choices

Let’s take a quick look at some of the most important things to remember when eating at a fast food restaurant:

1. Choose Chicken Over Beef
Mostly, the beef burgers are high in saturated fat, and provide a very poor quality protein source.

Instead, go for a chicken breast, but be sure that it is grilled — a breaded chicken breast may actually be a worse choice, than if you had opted for the burger.

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If the fast food location you are eating in happens to offer chilli, this can actually be a very good alternative.

The kidney beans in chili mean it has lots of fiber and protein, so it will be both filling and satisfying, without being too heavy on calories. Just take care with your portion size, and your side orders.

2. Be Careful With Fish
A seemingly smart option may be fish, but often the fish also comes breaded, and is served with a very high calorie sauce as well.

If you can find somewhere serving plain fish, that would be a great option, just ask them to bring the sauce or dressing on the side.

3. Put Your Own Condiments On
By putting your own condiments on your food, rather than taking whatever the meal is served with, you can save some serious calories, fat and sugar.

When choosing your condiments, stick with mustard, and a very small amount of ketchup, if you have to. Remember that ketchup is also very high in total sugar content, so do keep it limited to a small serving size, to prevent the calorie intake from becoming too high.

4. Take Care With Salads
Many people gravitate to salads when eating away from home, as they think they are healthier, but sometimes this isn’t the case.

While salads can be much lower in calories, many fast food restaurants add on ramen noodles, slivered nuts, croutons, cheese, bacon bits – basically the whole works.

This can add up to a lot of calories overall, which you may not notice when you think you are eating something ‘healthy.’

So, unless you specifically request that they make some alterations to the salad, you may be just as safe to avoid them entirely.

5. Choose Water
Ditching the soft drinks for plain water is one of the easiest ways to cut down on calories at the fast food restaurant. And, if water was the only drink you consumed, you could probably save at least $20 (or more) per week.

Most soft drinks contain 200 calories or more, obviously water has zero calories… it seems like a no-brainer to me when you are trying to cut down on your calorie intake.