One of the biggest and best pieces of side advice the dietitian gave us was to check out the nutritional information for every restaurant we frequent and figure out what we can eat within our carb budget for a given meal. So I spent the next few days casually building meals at various fast food places.
My budget calls for 3-5 carb units (45-75mg of carbohydrate) at each meal.
Avoid the fries. Just sayin’. Also, you’re kind of screwed at Perkin’s and I don’t even want to consider what my dietitian would say if I told her I went to IHOP. Love the food, but very few things I like there come in under my limit. You’re not supposed to do it this way, but if you’re going to do pancakes or hash browns like theirs, try to hold back as much as you can on the syrup and watch your carbs at the previous and/or next meals.
Turns out a pair of McDoubles comes out to almost exactly 4 units of carbohydrate. One McDouble and a McChicken comes in right around 5.
Then I stopped at the drive-through and had a Thought.
Ordered my usual two McDoubles with extra pickles, then asked for Big Mac sauce and lettuce as well. They charged me an extra sixty cents per burger (30 cents for each item), bringing the cost per burger to $1.79. Two of them and a drink came out to five bucks. A single Big Mac is four or five bucks all by itself, and my version loses that extra piece of bread from the middle. Lower carbs, less bread, cheaper.
I call that a win.