I will be interested in the advice you get from similarly situated fast food workers. I've got plenty of experience eating fast food, fried food, pizza, donuts, fries, chips .... but I have one advantage you don't have -- I don't work in it all day long, so I can much more easily get away from it.
As I've gotten away from processed food and fried food and other take out food over the past couple of years I've found I don't really crave it that much any more. So the urges can go away. Still, I am not really standing in your shoes so my advice may not make sense to you. But here it is anyway 😉
1. Eat some good food before you go to work. Food you find especially tasty is hard to resist under any circumstances, but much more so when you are hungry. So if it were me I would change my eating schedule and eat a full meal before the shift, and eat another at the end. At least half the plate (or giant salad bowl) should be full of different veggies to fill your stomach with low-calorie nutritious food, and then add some protein and healthy fats from whole foods (avocado, nuts) and high fiber foods like chickpeas or other beans for additional satiety. Once you've got that in your belly, you may still crave some of what your restaurant serves, but it will be easier for you to stay to smaller portions and not munch all night long.
2. Build a better habit. Over the next few weeks develop some sort of strategy that cuts the amount 'free food' you eat from work at least in half. When I lost 40 lbs in 2017, it started with giving up my two beers a night drinking altogether for a month (to prove to myself that I could), and then moving to drinking only on odd numbered days. I personally found it impossible to go from two beers to just one/night, but giving it up entirely every other night wasn't that hard because I always knew that it was just one day off, and anybody can last a day, right? That is pretty much my current habit now some 20 months later, except that because I don't drink every night it is somehow easier to stop at one beer on the nights I do drink.
3. No free food. After you've done #2 for a while, stop eating free food from work altogether. If you really want it, buy it, enjoy it, and realize that you just gave up something else you could have used that money for. (Actually ring it up and put the money in the register so it has to be accounted for when the drawer is balanced). When gas got to 4 or 5 bucks a gallon, people stopped driving big cars, when cigarettes got to $5-8$ a pack, the percentage of adults in the US who smoked dropped from 60% to 20%. Cost matters, and one reason you are indulging is because it seems stupid to give up free food. But it is really not; you are just trading a short-term gain for a long-term loss of becoming heavier and more sickly. Actually paying for the food makes the short-term reward less 'rewarding.'
I hope this helps a bit @Highland_Pastor. I am impressed at anyone who can maintain a healthy weight and balanced diet while working around free tasty food. Keep us updated on the strategies that seem to work for you, and the ones that don't. You aren't the only one dealing with this.
Scott | Baltimore MD
Charge 6; Inspire 3; Luxe; iPhone 13 Pro
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