From Salon.com…

The 9 Most God-Awful, Terrible-For-You Chain Restaurant Meals On The Market

When I was young, I was skeletally skinny.  Scary skeletally skinny.  Then I got older, got married, and the ol’ metabolism slowed down to where it wasn’t what it used to be.

In sum, I blew the hell up.

It was a slow process down the road to becoming overweight but I knew it was happening and tried (not too hard) to slow/reverse the process.  But it wasn’t until I felt pain in my feet/ankles whenever I walked that I realized it was time to get serious.

What followed was sheer, absolute hell.  While there exists a cottage industry around weight loss, the reality is that if you want to lose weight, this is what you have to do: 1) Eat less.  2) Exercise.

I spent days on end with headaches and a gnawing hunger (one causing the other, no doubt) and did some light exercises each day to kill even more calories.  When all was said and done, I lost something in the range of forty five or so pounds and, while I still consider myself a little on the heavy side (roughly 10 pounds over my “ideal” weight), I look much closer to what I used to as a youngster than what I became later on as a young adult.

And those pains in my feet/ankles?  Completely gone.

I look around nowadays and I can’t help but compare what people look like today to what people used to look like in my youth.  People have always come in different shapes and sizes but but seems to me there are more heavyset people around nowadays than before, and with restaurants giving out meals like those listed above, that’s not all that surprising.

Then again, when I was younger, the “large” soda and fries sizes in the various fast food joints was equivalent to what today is the “medium” size.  Is it any wonder weight is becoming more of an issue when we’re getting larger and larger portions of foods?

Then again, one shouldn’t go too far and engage in extreme and unhealthy weight loss/control behaviors.

Regardless, it’s safe to say the above listed meals should be avoided.  Or, if you order them, it might be very wise to share the meal!