Saying goodbye to fast food.

I know this is a very touchy subject. I am sure I may get a little backlash from this blog post, but please keep in mind these are my thoughts and opinions, and this is part of my journey that I am sharing with everyone who chooses to follow along with it.

First of all, I know many will think "Yeah, well I am so busy that sometimes I just have to get it, or we won't have time to eat". I don't have any of my kids in after school activities. Well, my oldest has bible study. I do however, have 3 kids, and two of which have special needs. Often times, we have appointments, and we live way out in the boonies. I have been able to cut out some of these appointments, so we're not constantly on the road, but when we do it's a half-full day even of driving from A, to B, to C! I am the QUEEN of "We have to eat fast food", or, I was.

32 days ago (yes, I have an app on my phone that is counting), I asked my husband to stop at Burger King on his way home from work. He works 45 minutes away, had closed that day, and I just did not feel like preparing anything that night. We used to live just a few minutes from his work, and conveniently just a few minutes from about 4 different fast food places. I'll touch on that more in just a bit. Anyway, 20 bucks or so later, and 15 minutes extra commute for him for having to stop and wait for food, we had our dinner.

It had been at least a week before that since we had any fast food. Before we moved out here, it was a good few times a week we were eating a meal from a fast food place. It just did not taste good at ALL! Then after we ate, I felt like dead weight, and just wanted to go to sleep. I felt awful. I have seen the light. Once we finally started to cut down, and then ate it again, it was like my body was begging me not to eat it. Like I was putting the wrong kind of gas into my car or something. It didn't really even taste that good to me anymore now that it wasn't the typical meal we had been eating.

That night we made the decision to just stop eating it. We had a trip coming up to go visit my parents for Thanksgiving too, so it would be a big change for us. It's a 6-8 hour drive, depending on traffic, and our kiddo's. So, we made sandwiches, some snacks, and even some breakfast egg muffins the night before. On top of saving a ton of money, we also felt better and were less tired for the long drive, AND, we saved some time on the drive because we just ate in the car. We have 2 dogs we travel with too, so I don't like to stop somewhere that they can't get out with us.

So, remember I said we lived minutes from a bunch of fast food places? Someone told me that they figured out how much they spent in eating out in one months time, and it was outrageous. I thought, I'm sure we spend a couple hundred, but probably not much more. We spent over FIVE hundred dollars eating out in one month. That was a month we didn't have any other travel than appointments and errands. It was purely out of convenience that we stopped anywhere for food. 500 bucks is a lot of money for our size family on one income, believe me!

So, as part of our journey to minimalism, we are looking at EVERYTHING we do in our lives, and deciding what we can do to improve our quality of life, by living with less. Fast food is less garbage for our bodies, which will result in better health both short, and long term, AND it is saving us a large amount of money.