Snacking contrary to popular belief is good, healthy snacks around your main meals is a good habit, we should be eating every 2 to 3 hours at least, for some this might come at a bit of a shock!
‘I’m trying to lose weight, I must eat less.”
NO! you need to control your portions, eat sensible food at the right times of day and increase activity levels.
Let’s cover the WHY! Your body is designed to survive, it is very good at making sure you do, therefore if you decide to give it less fuel, less often, it switches to a starvation mode which has the physiological effect on the body of consuming less energy. Storing as much additional energy as possible, as fat and lowering metabolism, all to conserve your fat reserves! Whoo, wait we are trying to lose weight and fat, we don’t want to slow down our bodies and stop using fat for energy! Exactly!
You’ve no doubt met the skinny guy or girl who eats non stop and is yet relatively slim, well these people have a well-trained metabolism. They are not ‘lucky’ there bodies just know that they are likely to get food often, and that fuel is not something they need to conserve, so their body will just burn it up as and when it likes, as much as it likes. Having said this, it’s not a ticket to get down McDonald’s and go mad, of course, what you eat needs to be healthy and well balanced.
The key to snacking is, therefore, to stop your body going into starvation mode and promote an increase in metabolic rate.
What snacks should I be eating
As long as it’s healthy, contributes positively to your daily food portions and doesn’t unbalance your food groups, almost anything is OK. Steer clear of CRAPpy snacks with empty calories, chocolate, crisps, biscuits and the like, they have no nutritional benefit for you. Fruit, yoghurt, a handful of nuts are good examples of healthy snacks.
Tone your snacks down as your progress throughout the day and avoid snacking past 7 pm at night or several hours before you go to bed, make sure you start the day with breakfast and your metabolism will be on fire.
Snacks should not come from any of the CRAP categories, these are;
- Carbonated Drinks
- Refined Sugar
- Alcohol
- Processed Foods
You can easily make your own snacks, there are plenty of recipes for healthy snacks you can make at home.
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