If you think your habit of snacking throughout the day is stopping your efforts to lose weight, maybe you’re not choosing the right type of snack. Your mother may have told you snacking was bad, especially right before supper. That’s because she didn’t want you to spoil your appetite. Snacking at the right time with the right type of food can actually boost your efforts toward weight loss.
Plan ahead with healthy snacks.
A healthy snack mid-morning or mid-afternoon can help fill the void and prevent you from overeating at your next meal or grabbing a quick candy bar when you stop for gas. Having a healthy snack like a piece of fruit with peanut butter or vegetables with a lower calorie dip, can keep you from eating too fast at your next meal because you’re ravenous. Your mother was right, snacks do spoil your appetite and if you’re trying to lose weight, that’s a good thing. A healthy snack should be a combination of protein and carbohydrates but with no added sugar. It can provide immediate energy from the carbs and longer lasting energy from the protein.
You’ll keep brain fog at bay with healthy snacks.
Low blood sugar can impair your brain functioning and cause that foggy feeling, where thinking clearly isn’t as easy. Most people tend to grab a sugary treat to boost their energy level. It does that, but it spikes it and what goes up must come down, which it does with a vengeance, leaving you worse off than it was when you started. When you plan ahead, you can have snacks like individual servings of tuna or a handful of walnuts. Both contain Omega 3 that helps improve blood pressure, reduces the risk of heart disease and prevents conditions like depression or ADHD.
You’ll reduce the risk of insulin resistance and diabetes when you plan ahead with a healthy snack.
Food with high fiber, like oatmeal, and vegetables and those that have no added sugar can slow the absorption of sugar. It can prevent a quick rise in blood sugar levels and cause insulin levels to increase. Over time, high levels of insulin cause insulin resistance, where the cells don’t open to take in the glucose, which produces more insulin and eventually leads to insulin resistance and diabetes. Planning ahead and using healthy snacks as mini meals can help prevent insulin resistance that can slow weight loss, too.
- When planning healthy snacks, keep them between 100 and 200 calories and chose ones dense in nutrients. Fresh or frozen grapes and walnuts, a small apple with a spoonful of nut butter or cottage cheese or yogurt with fruit are good options.
- If you workout daily, having a snack before your workout can provide the energy for a good performance and one afterward can aid in recovery. If you workout right before a meal, you can skip the post workout snack.
- If trail mix is your snack of choice, make your won. Fill it with dried fruit, nuts and seeds. If you want a little sweetness, sparingly use semi-sweet baking bits that are high in cacao.
- Studies show that when you snack, you’ll get health benefits, like maintaining weight control, leveling blood sugar and even lowering bad cholesterol like triglycerides and LDLs, but the snacks should be healthy ones.
For more information, contact us today at Targeted Nutrition Technologies
