Should I snack if I want to lose weight? I say YES!!!
Wait, what? I can snack and lose weight?
There is research that supports healthy snacking for weight loss! The operative word here is healthy!!
There is also research that says not to. I am in the camp that snacks, healthy of course, can improve your health, curb your cravings, regulate your mood – You know you get grumpy when you’re hungry, gives you an energy boost – we’ve all had the 3 o’clock slump, and it also may indeed fight off weight gain.
By avoiding extreme hunger, you are more likely to pick healthy snacks instead of high fat, salty chips or sugary candy, pie and cookies. By picking healthy snacks through out the day, you are also not likely to over eat at your meals.
So, we have established healthy snacks are good but that only works if you have healthy snacks around! If you only have chips and candy in the house or at the office, you won’t be eating a healthy snack. Take the time when you are out shopping to pick up a bag of small apples or some baby carrots and hummus. Other options are
- Low-fat dairy products like yogurt (make sure you pick lower sugar options – I like siggi’s as a low sugar option) and cheese (the mini Babybel is a good option here)
- Nuts & seeds like walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds. Just make sure you pay attention to portions here. You can easily get a few hundred calories in nuts without too much trouble
- Other fruits and veggies like berries, bananas, grapes and celery, red peppers, cherry tomatoes
You get the idea here. Loads of options for healthy snacks.
I find that if you have fruits and veggies already cleaned and cut up in the fridge, you are more likely to eat it and if you have hand fruit like bananas, oranges and peaches on the kitchen counter you are more likely to grab it.
Give it a try and let me know if you find it helpful to choose healthy!
If you think of food as fuel, it might be easier to make the healthy choice. You eat a snack that includes a carbohydrate and protein, like hummus and baby carrots, you are using a slow-burning fuel that keeps you going all day. A small, healthy snack keeps your engine topped off. This helps with increased energy so there isn’t that post eating sleepiness, increased concentration and most importantly prevents over eating.
Next, I want to touch on how snacking curbs cravings. If you keep your blood sugar (that which tells your body you are hungry) at a steady state, you prevent cravings because of low blood sugar and you prevent your metabolism from slowing down. When you let yourself get to hungry, your body goes into starvation mode and stores extra body fat for reserved energy just in case you go for a long time without eating. What is a long time? Anything longer than 5 hours.
By snacking on healthy carb/protein combination snacks, you are telling your body to keep the engine revving and your metabolism on high.
Weight loss happens when your body is getting good healthy food that keeps your metabolism running!
One last thing, I’m not one to encourage counting calories (see my video on just eating less) but keeping snacks about 150 calories in between meals is just about perfect.
If you are one that skips to the bottom to find out how long a post is, here are the bullet points of this post.
7 Key Points of Healthy Snacking –
- can help with weight loss
- will regulate your mood
- will give you an energy boost
- should include a combination of carbohydrate and protein like apple and peanut butter
- will help with curbing cravings
- prevents metabolism slow down
- should be small and around 150 calories
I hope you found this helpful and now, I am off to get a healthy snack.
Here’s to your wellness and living a life you love! ~Amy