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August 31, 2009
Snack Savvy
Can snacking help you lose weight? It all depends on what you consider a snack and what the rest of your caloric intake looks like.
The main benefit of snacking is that it can curb feelings of starvation before a meal and thus prevent gorging. But when one considers that a typical cookie nowadays is the size of a Frisbee, and one bagel contains as many as 4 or 5 servings of carbohydrates, who's to say what a "small" looks like anymore?
Done appropriately, snacks can help you eat less at mealtime. However, you have to follow a few rules.
1. Plan ahead: Food is not just going to magically appear in the fridge or in your office drawer. Make a grocery store run at least once a week.
Spend time washing, peeling, cutting and whatever else is required to make your snacks ready to eat. If the snack is in the fridge and ready to go, that's what you'll eat. If it isn't, that's when you'll go for the bag of chips.
2. Pack something you like: There's nothing worse than being hungry and having a snack that you're not into. Don't pack rice cakes if you don't like them. Pack hummus with carrots if that's what you like. Pack ¼ cup of lightly salted edamame for a salty snack, or an apple with a thin spread of peanut butter.
3. Portion it out: Remember, this is a snack, not a meal. Snacks should range from 175 to 225 calories. If you're not into measuring out your food just yet, then opt for individually packaged items. Good options include part-skim mozzarella cheese sticks, 6-ounce low-fat yogurts and single-serving containers of such foods as cottage cheese or whole wheat pretzels. Whole fruits are a great snack, of course. Dried fruits are almost as good, but they do contain excess sugar. It's easy to overeat on dried fruits -- about ¼ cup is generally a single serving.
Posted by Lisa at August 31, 2009 7:28 PM
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