I’m sure you’ve heard the expression: ‘you are what you eat’ and that is true to a certain extent. If you overeat, you’ll become fat. If you under eat, you’ll become skinny. But, if you eat a burger once in a while – you will not become a burger (not even once in a while.)
In bodybuilding, there seems to be a huge aversion to eating any fast food. My thinking is that some people just take it too seriously, and will sacrifice even the good stuff in life – like a bucket of KFC and a McDonalds once in a while – for fear of losing progress or just on principle. Bully for them.
I don’t know about you, but I like to enjoy my life outside of bodybuilding, and I do indulge in fast food – once or twice a week, sometimes. So what? My body is still in excellent shape, and is better than 99.99% of the general population, and that’s what it’s all about for me.
It’s not the food that makes you fat; it’s how much you eat.
You have no more chance of becoming fat or losing muscle by eating a hamburger than you would your average bodybuilding meal. It’s all about the calories, and nutrients and knowing what you are taking in – if the calories are the same, the protein is the same, and the carbs are the same, it’s all good.
Fast food is a reward. It shouldn’t be a way of life. People are going to argue ‘but fast food is of sub-par quality’ but that argument is absolutely moot when you realize that you are not necessarily eating fast food to gain muscle, but as a reward. It wouldn’t even matter if a hamburger at 500 calories was completely empty and devoid of nutrition (which is never the case anyway) because as a responsible person who dedicates 90 – 99% of their life and time to eating right, it’s going to have absolutely zero impact in moderation.
Fast food does contain useful nutrition, so maybe its sub-par compared to chicken breast, but a chicken burger is still going to be pretty good nutrition-wise. Some of the most legendary bodybuilders around eat a ton of fast food – Lee Priest for one. And before you shout: ‘But he does steroids!’, let me remind you that steroids only work to better assimilate the nutrients you take in into your system and put them to use. No steroid ever can, or ever will, turn crap nutrients into good nutrients.
Also, everyone assumes fast food is to blame for obesity, when its simply people who are lazy and greedy who are to blame. The facts are, people love a scapegoat and love to rally around and point the figure – particularly when it’s against The Man. But, in the case of fast food, the finger should be pointed squarely at the fat, greedy slob with 5 Big Mac’s and the bucket-size coke.
Conclusion
Unless you get a kick out of, or pride yourself on telling people you don’t touch junk food, there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy a little of what you always have – providing the absolute majority of your time and diet you are doing the ‘right thing’. I promise you, the negative impact on your body beautiful will be absolutely non-existent if you stay within the bounds.
Although if you gorge on fast food without consideration, this becomes not only a pointlessly expensive but is terribly unhealthful in large quantities. Unless you already have 200+ lbs of lean body mass, and are training like a maniac you will just end up getting fat and likely inherit some sort of medical problem with longer term use.
Below is a link to calorie menus for some of the popular fast food Restaurants
Burger King [PDF here]