This is dangerous ground, especially in the early days. You can’t just casually walk in and order like it was the old days. You have to prepare, read every ingredient, calculate the numbers to make they’re not lying (they lie a lot) and most difficult of all, you have to follow through on the plan instead of winding up with a foot’s worth of Subway sugarsponge bread in your belly before you even realize it. The smell of waffle fries and crispy battered food you can’t have is going to be a major problem. You want to set yourself up for success. Standing in the middle of 8 lane highway thinking you can zig-zag your way through masses of cars coming at you is not the easy route you’re looking for.
A quick glance at Chik-fil-a’s menu, for instance, finds that the Grilled Market Salad is 330 cals and a ludicrous and offensive 26 grams carbs. And that’s before you dump actual sugar on it in the form of the fat-free abominations they pass off as salad dressings. Even the Cobb with No Meat, the lowest in cals and carbs, is 250 calories and 18 grams. Their so-called Superfood bowl has 25 grams of carbs. Dressing and dips are terrible, bursting with sugar, with only the buffalo sauce low in carbs and has no sugar on the ingredient list.
Chipotle is a minefield too, even if you manage to avoid hospitalization from food-born illness. No rice. No tortillas. No chips. No beans. That doesn’t leave you with a ton of options. You’re going to find it far more a painful and frustrating experience than a satisfying shortcut.
I second Luvtcook’s suggestion of Boston Market, which has great rotisserie chicken, steamed mixed vegetables and some surprsingly great green beans. Popeye’s has a single option on the menu that works for us: naked cajun-spiced tenders and green beans. They make them southern style with the hamhock and they’re redonkulous. I bring them home and make my own homemade blue cheese dip, something you are particularly adept at, to accompany the chicken since I can’t use their sugar sauce. It has to be drive-through thing because when you go inside you will smell those unbelievable biscuits, so stay in the car.
There’s also the chain steakhouses. Lonhorn’s has a solid pepper steak salad with a la carte veggie sides that are not entirely deplorable. The make their blue cheese in house and there’s no sugar in it. Yup, I checked. Those bottled things these joints buy from Sodexo by the gross are a mess.
These options are the least worst, but frankly they’re all bad. The bald truth is that fast food is part of what got you here. I used it as a crutch in the last couple of years of hyperobesity and the notion that you can put on a leash on the dragon and he’ll walk by your side, docile and sweet as a therapy dog, to give you succor in your time of need is pernicious hooey. His agenda and yours have zero overlap. That guy is going to burn you to a cinder the minute you even think about ordering a grilled chicken patty with no bun.