Sample Fast Food Meals for Nutrition Pros

Get a bunch of nutrition pros together and you’ll probably witness them consuming all-manner of different fast food meals. Let’s take your typical fast food restaurant, serving burgers, chicken, pizzas and other not-so-healthy meals, as well as the odd semi diet-friendly one, and examine what different nutrition professionals might go for.

The Macro-Counting Nutrition Pro

Macros are proteins, carbohydrates and fats. If you’re a macro counter, it means that your diet is based around hitting a certain amount of each macro every day. You’re not limited by your food choices, rather your food choices are dictated by the numbers you have to hit.

The macro-counting nutritionist can pick literally anything from the menu, but it needs to fit with their daily totals, so they’ll either choose to go to a fast food restaurant that provides nutrition breakdowns on the menu, or choose a simple dish they can estimate the values of.

The Clean-Eating Nutrition Pro

Clean eaters believe in only choosing whole or natural foods. This goes hand in hand with the paleo diet, meaning no bread, grains or processed meats.

These folks will almost certainly go for a salad, with lean meat or fish and very little dressing. If the fast food joint offers fruit bags, as some now do, they may get one of those too, along with water or coffee.

The Performance Nutrition Pro

Plenty of powerlifters, strength athletes and competitors are also nutrition coaches. These guys are purely concerned with eating to optimize performance, which often means eating a lot to fuel recovery and growth and replenish muscle glycogen and protein stores following training.

You might be surprised with this, but expect to see these fellas letting their hair down and indulging in pizza, fried chicken, burgers and maybe even fries. You can bet your last buck they’ll be even more likely to do this if they’re eating post-training or have just competed.

The High-Carb Nutrition Pro

While most nutritionists now recognize the importance of proteins and healthy fats, some still advocate a high-carb, and possibly even vegetarian diets.

Vegetarian pizzas with low-fat cheese and extra veggies are on the menu, as are fish or veggie burgers, holding the mayo. Salads are a must, and they’ll probably have some fruit and maybe a juice or smoothie too.

The Low-Carb Nutrition Pro

If a nutrition pro is a fan of Atkins, or a ketogenic diet, their meal plans will be high in protein and fat, but very low in carbs.

While this does rule out a lot of menu options, there’s still plenty of variety. Fast food burgers are generally pretty fatty, which sits well with low-carb folk. They’ll get a couple of these and throw away the bun. Fried chicken is a good bet too, but you’ll probably find them removing the coating, which is higher in carbs and just eating the meat. They’ll skip the fries, but probably get a salad with some mayo or an olive oil-based dressing to boost their fat intake and get some extra vitamins and minerals without overdoing the carbs.

As you can see, nutrition pros aren’t perfect, but they do know how to balance following a healthy diet and reaching their goals, with setting a good example to clients and having a life outside of nutrition.

The odd fast food meal won’t do any harm in the long run, provided you’re sensible and pick choices that more or less match your goals.