My Fit Foods, a restaurant offering pre-packaged foods, opened a new location at 6403 Hillcrest Ave. (TYLER WILLIAMS/The Daily Campus)

On Jan. 2, My Fit Foods opened its doors next to the Southern Methodist University campus, giving students the opportunity to experience fast and healthy and food at an affordable price.

Personal trainer and certified nutritionist, Mario L. Mendias, founded My Fit Foods with one simple goal in mind, “Eat fit. Live Fit.”

As a trainer, Mendias found that his clients could not get the results they wanted, simply due to their poor eating habits.

“Eighty percent of your results come from nutrition,” Mendias said, meaning exercise alone cannot yield results. Even though he encouraged his clients to eat healthy, he realized that people either do not have the time to prepare healthy food or are simply not educated enough about proper nutrition. He made it his goal to make those resources available.

Mendias started cooking in his small apartment in Houston in 2004, measuring every ingredient to ensure balanced meals with the proper nutrients the body needs. With only one cook available and an expensive grocery list, Mendias worked hard to share his goal of healthy eating. He originally offered only six menu items but now has more than 45 meals to choose from at over 20 locations in four Texas cities.

The biggest fear for some when it comes to healthy eating is taste. Many people believe that in order to eat healthy, the foods they love must be given up. However, clients agree that My Fit Foods leaves nothing out when it comes to flavor.

Customer Kelly Odell said she loves “My Fit Foods because the menu has many classic favorites plus some new foods [she] finds [her]self craving.”

“The best part is that you never notice the missing unhealthy ingredients because the food has so much flavor,” Odell said.

With a wide variety menu, from gluten free to vegan items, My Fit Foods offers something for everyone.

Eating My Fit Foods has many benefits from weight loss, to higher energy levels. Its use of unprocessed foods and weekly cooked meals with fresh ingredients receives recommendations from doctors and cardiologists and is endorsed by nutritionists and dieticians.

My Fit Foods encourages people, on their website, to try its 21-day challenge, which is “designed to restore your natural energy and reset your metabolism.”

This challenge involves nutritionist consultations from the staff for 21 days of meals from My Fit Foods. Clients have lost 8 to 15 pounds on this plan and report having higher energy levels.

My Fit Foods’ website says: “Our 21-Day Challenge is designed to restore your natural energy and reset your metabolism while building healthy habits. This is accomplished by detoxifying your body and by supplying 21 straight days of nutrient dense My Fit Food foods.”

Many successes have come from starting with the challenge and each store has health consultants on staff to help with every step of the process of training your body to want and crave healthier foods.

My Fit Foods is has four different locations in Dallas to offer residents and students healthier choices when it comes to mealtime.

My Fit Foods is perfect for students who are always on the go, or do not like to cook and want a healthy home cooked meal. It has endless options and none of the menu items are boring.

My Fit Foods now makes it easier for SMU students to test healthy eating with its new location on Hillcrest Avenue, which is right across from campus.

Menu and Pricing

For breakfast, My Fit Foods offers 13 original items including breakfast tacos, steel cut oatmeal pancakes, which they call “patty’s” and a fruit and yogurt bowl.

Breakfast items range from $3.75 to $9 and come in small, medium, and large sizes, which vary in amount of food and calories in each dish.

Lunch and dinner items can be chosen from an array of low carb or regular meals, which include lean meats like chicken and lean beef and fish with vegetables.

Prices for the lunch and dinner items range from $6.75 to $13, giving students a range of choices and price ranges to choose from when trying to eat a healthy meal.

My Fit Foods also provides snack items and supplements such as fruit or a cookie.

For students who like to have left overs, but do not have time to run to the store, My Fit Foods also sells lean meats in bulk.

Students can buy a pound of turkey, which is perfect for making sandwiches during the day.