I Stopped Eating American Restaurant Food for 45 Days, Off 3 Medications

This was not a cleanse or a moral performance. I simply quit chain-restaurant food for 45 days, cooked Mediterranean in my small Spanish kitchen, and kept receipts and numbers. By day 38 I was off three long term meds with my doctor’s sign off, lighter by 16.4 pounds, and sleeping like a sane person. The surprise was how little willpower it took once the traps were gone.

The exact rules I used for 45 days

I made the rules boring on purpose so the month would run itself. If you want to copy this, start here.

1. No American chain-restaurant food, including sit down brands and fast casual menus that read like a lab manual. That meant no Applebee’s, Cheesecake Factory, Chili’s, Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, Buffalo Wild Wings, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Panera, Starbucks sandwiches, Five Guys, Shake Shack, Chipotle bowls with industrial tortillas, and the frozen knockoffs of those menus. If the menu needed a glossary of stabilizers, I skipped it.
2. Eat like a Spaniard on weekdays, which meant lunch at 14:00, soup first, a simple protein, one starch that tastes like itself, vegetables you can identify, fruit for dessert, coffee after. Dinner was smaller, often an omelet with salad or a bowl of broth with beans. Timing did half the work before ingredients did anything.
3. Olive oil only for cooking and finishing, butter sparingly, no seed oil fryers. When a café used seed oils, I ordered something that never saw the fryer. The fat change calmed my stomach faster than any supplement ever has.
4. No sugar drinks, no “lite” syrups, no dessert out of habit. Fruit or a small slice of something real on Sundays. Sweet can be pleasure, it does not need to be a personality.
5. Walk ten minutes after warm meals and take stairs when reasonable. Not as exercise culture, just as a rule. Movement threaded through the day beats gym heroics once a week.

I kept one loophole. If a local restaurant cooked the way I was cooking at home, I ate there. Grilled fish, potato, salad. Lentils with chorizo in a quantity that would not impress Instagram. A pear with a knife. Local kitchens made it easy to keep the rules without speeches.

The medications I stopped, and who said I could

I am not telling anyone to throw pills away. I showed up with numbers, I listened, and my doctor made the calls. The three medications I left behind by day 38 were:

• Omeprazole 20 mg daily for chronic reflux. Started after years of late dinners and fried menus that felt normal in the States.
• Metformin 500 mg twice daily for prediabetes and a fasting glucose that would not stay under 105.
• Lisinopril 10 mg daily for mild hypertension that bounced with sodium and stress.

By day 21 I sent a log of fasting glucose, blood pressure, weight, and symptoms. By day 31 my reflux was gone without antacids for two weeks, morning glucose averaged 88 to 93 mg/dL, and home blood pressure readings sat at 116 to 122 over 72 to 78. We tapered omeprazole first, then lisinopril, then metformin with a plan to reinstate if the numbers regressed. I stopped nothing on my own. I sent logs every seven days and booked a lab draw at day 45 to check A1c and lipids.

If you need a sentence for your clinician, try this: “I am removing chain-restaurant food for 45 days, eating Mediterranean at Spanish hours, logging daily vitals, and I would like a taper plan if my numbers hold.” Doctors relax when there is a plan and a clock.

The week by week timeline, with numbers you can compare to your own

Day 1 to 7
Water weight left, which is not magic. Breakfast became coffee and fruit or an egg, lunch a bowl of caldo with chickpeas then a plate of grilled fish, potato, and salad, dinner a tortilla francesa with tomatoes or leftover lentils. Sodium dropped, swelling in my hands vanished by day four.

• Weight change: minus 5.2 lb
• Fasting glucose average: 97 mg/dL
• Blood pressure average: 126 over 82
• Reflux symptoms: 70 percent lower by day seven without rescue antacids

Day 8 to 14
Cravings for chain sauces disappeared once soup landed first. I stopped snacking at night because dinner was not a performance. Sleep improved without effort, which changed mornings more than any gadget ever has.

• Cumulative weight change: minus 8.1 lb
• Fasting glucose: 92 mg/dL
• Blood pressure: 122 over 78
• Omeprazole tapered to every other day by agreement

Day 15 to 21
I noticed how often chain routines force extra eating. No bread basket the size of my head, no free refills that turned into a habit, no appetizer that needed a second description. Removing friction looked like discipline from the outside.

• Cumulative weight change: minus 10.6 lb
• Fasting glucose: 90 mg/dL
• Blood pressure: 120 over 76
• Omeprazole stopped on day 19, reflux zero for seven days

Day 22 to 31
This was the hard window in past attempts. This time nothing dramatic happened. Lunch at 14:00 and a walk held the line. Two restaurants that cook like a home kitchen kept social life intact. When timing does the work, willpower rests.

• Cumulative weight change: minus 13.9 lb
• Fasting glucose: 89 mg/dL
• Blood pressure: 118 over 76
• Lisinopril halved on day 25, stopped on day 31 with home readings in range

Day 32 to 45
No white knuckles left. Grocery list was on autopilot. I craved oranges and broth instead of chain desserts. Energy in the afternoon felt like a new decade.

• Final weight change: minus 16.4 lb
• Fasting glucose average week 6: 88 mg/dL
• A1c at day 45: 5.3 percent
• Triglycerides: down 41 points
• HDL: up 5 points
• Metformin tapered on day 34, stopped on day 38, fasting glucose stable
• Resting heart rate down 6 to 8 bpm most mornings

I kept taking vitamin D as before. I did not add supplements or powders. The menu and the clock were the intervention.

The chain menu traps that made everything worse

Here are the exact items that acted like switches when I lived on the old script. The point is not to shame taste. The point is to list the levers you can stop pulling.

• Chili’s “Crispers” piles with sauces that read like chemistry notes. Calorie math aside, the sodium in one order can blow past 2,000 to 3,000 mg before fries. Salt is not evil, surprise salt is.
• Cheesecake Factory starters that pretend to be small. The Spicy Chicken Chipotle Pasta has hovered near 2,000 calories for years. One plate at dinner, sleep wrecked, morning glucose angry. Portion drama punishes nights first.
• Olive Garden never ending bread and salad where salad swims in sugar fat and the bread is a hunger accelerant for the rest of the meal. Bread is not the villain, the reflex is.
• Buffalo Wild Wings sauces with sugar loads that hide in plain sight. Ten wings with the wrong glaze behaves like dessert before the meal arrives. Sweet plus fried plus beer equals reflux, every time.
• Panera and Starbucks “healthy” sandwiches that lean on emulsified dressings and soft bread with stealth sugar. They are convenient and they scream 16:00 crash. Marketing language does not change how your gut reads the label.
• Domino’s orders with extra sauce and stuffed crust that always turned into late night food. The timing, not the pizza, did the most damage. Late heavy dinner writes your morning face, it also writes your lab slip.

I do not believe these chains are uniquely evil. They are engineered for repeat business. If you put this food in your week, you get the week the food was designed to sell you. I was getting exactly what I ordered.

What I ate instead that required zero culinary talent

This looks like a cookbook, it is actually a life schedule.

Breakfast, three options in rotation

• Coffee, orange, slice of sourdough with olive oil and tomato.
• Yogurt with walnuts and an apple, drizzle of honey.
• Two eggs and leftover greens, water on the table.
  Key line inside the paragraph, breakfast is not a performance.

Lunch, Spanish pattern

• Soup first. Caldo de puchero, lentejas with carrots and celery, or tomato rice with olive oil.
• Protein second. Grilled sardines or hake with lemon, roasted chicken thigh, or a small steak.
• Starch and vegetable. Potato that tastes like potato, rice cooked in stock, green beans with garlic, bitter greens with lemon.
• Fruit, then coffee. Pears, oranges, or melon when it is in season.
  Soup and fruit did most of the appetite work without lectures.

Dinner, light and boring in the best way

• Tortilla francesa with salad.
• Broth with chickpeas and spinach, slice of bread, olive oil.
• Tuna with white beans, red onion, and parsley.
  If I wanted sweet, I cut a pear and sat down. Fruit after dinner reads as care, not sacrifice.

Snacks were olives, almonds, or nothing. When lunch moves to daylight and includes soup, snacks become less interesting. Hunger lines flatten when timing respects hormones.

Money, because this choice pays twice

A typical chain meal back home cost 16 to 22 dollars per person, higher if you count appetizers and drinks. Here the weekday shop for two with olive oil, beans, fish, vegetables, fruit, and bread hit €45 to €55 for four to five days of lunches and dinners. Even eating out at a neighborhood bar for a menu del día, soup and main and dessert and coffee ran €12 to €14 each. Dropping chains cut the budget by accident. Less novelty, more staples, fewer “just in case” extras.

I did not miss the endless small charges that orbit chain life. Delivery fees, service charges, surge prices, the extra side no one wanted. A boring pantry is a profitable pantry.

Why this worked without white knuckles

It was not virtue. It was design.

• Lunch at 14:00 moved the insulin curve. My body had time to digest before bed. Sleep arrived without a fight. Morning numbers improved because the night was quiet. Timing is a cosmetic and a lab test.
• Soup first shortened the rest of the meal without effort. Hot savory food slows eating, signals comfort, and makes bread feel less necessary. Sequence beats discipline.
• Olive oil replaced industrial fryers. My reflux left because the trigger left. I knew this years ago. I needed a rule on paper, not a fact in my head. Rules save you from the story you tell yourself when you are hungry.
• Walking stitched meals together so nothing sat like a stone. Ten minutes is stubbornly effective. Movement is a small hinge that moves everything else.
• Fruit ended meals so dessert stopped being a negotiation. A pear on a plate is a better story than a debate about being good.

None of this is original. It is just how people eat when the menu is written by grandmothers and not by quarterly targets.

Pushback you will hear, with lines you can use

“Chain food is convenient.”
So is boiling lentils once and eating twice. So is a rotisserie chicken with a salad you already washed. Convenience that keeps you medicated is not convenient.

“Protein is expensive.”
Canned fish, eggs, beans, chicken thighs, and the occasional steak cover a week without drama. Protein that fits the calendar beats protein that fits marketing.

“I need to be social.”
Pick restaurants that cook like a home kitchen, order the special, and keep the schedule. Social life rides fine on simple food.

“I cannot cook.”
If you can boil water and use salt, you can cook this way. Start with broth and eggs. Competence shows up when the menu is small and repeats.

“Quitting chains is extreme.”
Taking pills to digest dinner is extreme. Waking at 2 a.m. with acid in your throat is extreme. Paying for food that breaks your sleep is extreme. Cooking rice is ordinary.

The honest parts that did not go smoothly

I caved once at a friend’s birthday and ate a chain burger with fries. The next two nights I slept badly and my morning glucose popped to 102 mg/dL. That was clarifying, not tragic. I did not throw out the plan, I wrote the numbers and kept going. Perfect weeks are not required, honest weeks are.

I also had a day where I ate late and heavy. Dinner at 21:00 can still happen in Spain. The fix was not a speech. The fix was a bowl of broth the next day and a walk before lunch. Repair is a schedule, not a punishment.

A 21 day version you can start on Monday

You do not need 45 to feel the turn. Twenty one is enough to prove the point.

Week 1

• Delete chain food completely.
• Lunch in daylight four days out of seven.
• Soup before lunch twice.
• Walk ten minutes after the main meal daily.
• Log morning glucose and blood pressure if you track.

Week 2

• Olive oil for all cooking.
• Beans twice, fish once, chicken once.
• Fruit instead of dessert four nights.
• Keep water on the table.
• Send the numbers to your clinician if you are on reflux or blood pressure meds.

Week 3

• Eat out once at a place that cooks like a home kitchen.
• Push dinner earlier by one hour every night.
• Plan a light Sunday dessert and make it small.
• Keep logging.
• If numbers hold, ask your clinician for a taper conversation.

This is not a life sentence. It is a reset that tells you exactly how much of your medication list is about menus and clocks.

What changed besides the scale and the pillbox

My face lost the morning puff that I had accepted as age. My ring size went back to normal. I stopped clearing my throat after meals. Afternoon energy returned, which made evenings shorter because I did not need a screen to recover from dinner. Better sleep made every number easier.

The best change was not dramatic. It was the absence of drama. No chain meant no chain decisions. Fewer menus, fewer fries, fewer stories about why today deserved a treat. I ate, I walked, I slept, and the pillbox got lighter until it was empty.

If you only do three things

1. Move your main meal to daylight and put soup first. Timing and sequence are bigger than motivation.
2. Replace industrial fryers with olive oil and a pan. Your stomach will notice in seven days.
3. Walk ten minutes after warm meals. The day will stack better than you expect.

If you live in the States and chain food is how your week holds together, try three weeks with rules you can write on a single page. You can keep your friends and your life. You do not have to keep the pillbox.