The teenage cashier server handed my bag to me with a wry smile. The exact words I used were “the most pickles you’ve ever put on a sandwich, please.” I deconstructed the sandwich in my head: bun, fried chicken, pickles…pickles! Pickles…vegetable! Vegetable.healthy! “Extra pickles,” I ordered. Standing in line, my post-workout body craved nutrients. The crowd inside was hectic and demanding. It was peak dinner hour and it was crazy. In an effort to preserve my productivity (and sanity), I fasted all day, then worked out at the boxing gym, then headed to Popeyes. That way, I could have my chicken sandwich and eat it, too. “Strength training makes our muscles and cells more receptive to insulin…when you’re in a fasted state, you’ll have a lot of mental clarity.” She also said that if I waited to eat anything until dinner, any workout I did beforehand would burn fat. She recommended exercise and staying faithful to intermittent fasting. I asked Thurlow what, given my restrictions, I could do to remain mentally clear. “When our insulin levels are that high, our cognitive abilities are going to be down.” I told her how I felt that morning: “If your body is working really hard to digest these inflammatory foods like the Popeyes sandwich, you would probably have some level of brain fog,” she affirmed. Later that day, I spoke to Cynthia Thurlow, a certified nutrition specialist with over 20 years of experience, over the phone. I had to get my neurotransmitter kicks somehow, after all. Reluctantly, I got up, did an ab workout, and jumped into a cold shower. Yesterday’s three chicken sandwiches had sunk into me and anchored my mood to a bleak, landless expanse. “That’s the last one,” someone yelled behind her. There is a Popeyes down the street from my gym, so I picked one up on the way home. My head cleared with every punch-it felt like a baby wipe across my brain. I went to the boxing gym a few hours later and put in a good 12 rounds of work. Drained of energy, it took me a good 20 minutes to collect myself and drive back home to Cleveland. Each sandwich is 690 calories, which meant I consumed around 1,400 empty calories.in around five minutes.Īfterward, I sat in my car groaning. The deep-fried fillet and its crunchy trichomes of fat began to overwhelm any tang or buffer the pickles or bun provided. The first spicy sandwich was decent enough, but I struggled mightily to finish the second regular one. I ordered two: one spicy and one regular. There were about seven people in line in front of me, each of whom ordered between one-to-seven chicken sandwiches. The iconically orange restaurant rose from the drab landscape like a lava geyser. I was visiting the Akron, OH, jail (don’t ask), and found the nearest Popeyes afterwards. I didn’t eat my first chicken sandwich until Monday at noon. I planned to keep this schedule on my “chicken sandwich diet.” to 8 p.m.-and working out twice a day, an intense brief workout in the morning and a longer one in the afternoon. I’ve accomplished that in part by practicing intermittent fasting-which means I only eat from 12 p.m. This year, I lost more than 15 pounds and began firming my upper body into something other than a gelatinous blob. I am, especially recently, a healthy individual. Like the greens I banished from my diet, “lettuce go.” But that’s not the whole story-I discovered creative ways to eat the sandwich, learned about how to keep my mind clear on a fast food diet, and even ended up shedding a few stubborn pounds. It turns out that a week of only eating Popeyes chicken sandwiches did, in fact, make me wither like a salted snail. Two sandwiches per day is less than $8 if they didn’t make me wither like a salted snail, I would actually gain respect for the sandwich’s price to sustenance ratio. I wanted to see the compounded effects of the sandwich on my body: how my energy, mood, and weight would be affected. Nothing else-just water and chicken sandwiches. I would eat the chicken sandwich for every meal. I decided to join the ravenous legions and become the most dedicated Popeyes chicken sandwich eater in America for one week. But the Popeyes chicken sandwich does have some redeeming qualities: It’s priced at the exceedingly affordable $3.99 and, by common assent, is quite delicious. Is the rate at which folks are gobbling the sandwiches concerning? Conventional wisdom on fast food says yes. My flimsy math tells me that’s nearly 1 in 100 Americans eating the sandwich every day. Er, not exactly, but according to my calculations-with approximately 1,000 sandwiches sold at each Popeyes per day-2.5 million Popeyes chicken sandwiches are consumed daily by Americans. The Popeyes chicken sandwich is more popular than Jesus.
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