Are you eating healthy meals, but still not losing weight? While most of our energy and nutrients usually come from eating three healthy meals a day, for most of us that’s not all we eat, we are in fact snack-a-holics.
We snack for several reasons; Firstly, not all main meals are created equal and if they aren’t nutritious or filling enough a snack will help to fill up. Also if you have a large gap between meals you may need a snack “to keep you going”, or maybe you are tired or stressed and a quick sugar hit will bring you back to life. Sometimes people even snack out of boredom!
There is no problem with snacking, in fact it is a great way to avoid “grazing” or overeating at meal times, and can help to keep our energy up. The problem is what we eat when we snack. Many of us who stick to healthy diets for meals are often tempted by convenience snack foods, which are usually sugar filled, and unhealthy. So what is the best way to snack?
Here are a few simple rules for snacking smartly:
- Avoid impulse snacking. Plan your snack and always snack at the same time to avoid grazing, and over-snacking.
- Make healthy snacks convenient. Pre-prepare snacks and leave them in the fridge at home or work to be accessed quickly. Cook a batch of muffins to eat during the week, leave some dip and carrots in the work fridge for later in the week or cut up some fruit and take with you.
- Don’t buy fatty snacks. I know it seems obvious, but it works.
- Make sure that you don’t have fatty high sugar or high salt snack foods in a convenient place, because if it’s not there, then it wont tempt you nearly as much.
- Chose smaller snacks. Snacks don’t need to be huge and they definitely shouldn’t replace your meals, they are only there to get you through to your next meal.
- Packaged snacks should be around 600 kilojoules per serve, so try not to go above that amount.
- Nuts make a great snack. They are quick and healthy and they are also yummy and easy to eat.
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