I've found myself eating on the run a lot lately, frequently resorting to fast food or chain restaurants. This type of dining may conjure up images of fried and unhealthy selections, but that's not necessarily the case today. The new menus at most of these establishments include low-fat, low-calorie, and low-carb selections. Often they are highlighted on the menu.

For example, one day this week, I selected a low-fat bagel and low-fat cream cheese from one popular bakery and was astonished to see far fewer calories than I expected when I read the nutrition facts. Another morning, my 5-ounce low-fat muffin and black coffee netted me a total of only 300 calories. At dinner the same evening I grabbed an Asian chicken salad with sesame ginger dressing and my total meal was 380 calories.

Astonished by my low-fat and low-calorie selections, I excitedly shared my new finds with my husband, who suggested I start a "You Can Lose Weight with Fast Food" campaign.

Well, as many of you know, this has already been done -- but I was hooked on the concept. Reflecting on how this is possible, I realized that anyone who succeeds with a fast-food weight-loss campaign would be as tied to repetition as Morgan Spurlock was in his pursuit of a dramatic point about fast foods and obesity for his movie "Super Size Me."

While many chain and fast food restaurants are making great efforts to offer healthier choices, these menu items are still in the minority. In order to find my Asian Chicken Salad, I still had to wade through the menu's sea of burgers, and I had to be sure to request my chicken grilled, not fried.

The harsh reality is that, although a weight-loss campaign based on using these items is possible and has a high probability of success if you can resist temptation, you still need to teach yourself long-term diet habits. Repeating "safe" foods day after day is fine for a short-term diet, but eventually all of us will tire of not having variety in our diets and may be tempted by the burgers we see (and smell) first.