How many times a day you make a small walks to the kitchen to find something to nibble on? If you do it often, it means you fall into the millions of people around the world who enjoy munching.
And yet, if you ask them, most of them will tell you that the nibbling habit is bad. But the truth is that the snacking habit is not that harmful to your health or your body weight if you choose healthy snacks.
In fact, occasional snacking is good and useful for each diet. A small healthy snack will help keep your energy levels high, it’ll help reduce the feeling of hunger and thus you’ll avoid overeating during meals. It’s much better to nibble on something before lunch, than to sit at the table completely starving.
Here are our suggestions for overcoming hunger and the desire for overeating without it taking effect on your line and your health.
Delicious and healthy snacks
Dried fruits and nuts mix. Mix a cup of dried apricots, ½ cup dried cranberries, ½ cup roasted almonds, ½ cup sunflower seeds and 1 cup of peanuts or another kind of nuts. Put them all in a bag and shake it until well mixed. Divide the mixture into 10 small bags and you’ll have healthy snacks whenever you want it.
Apples with honey and peanut butter. Mix equal parts of honey and peanut butter. Cut an apple in slices and spread them with a thin layer of the prepared mixture. Instead of an apple, you can use rice cakes too.
Whole wheat bread with cream cheese. Take apiece of whole wheat bread and spread a thin layer of low fat cream cheese on it. Sprinkle flax seeds or sunflower seeds on top.
Fruit yogurt. Take a cup of low fat unsweetened yogurt, put frozen or fresh strawberries, blueberries or blackberries and a little sliced almonds and walnuts and mix.
Orange with sugar and cinnamon. Take one orange, peel it and cut it into 4 thin circles. Then stir 2 tablespoons of orange juice with 1 tablespoon of sugar and ¼ tablespoon of cinnamon. Sprinkle this syrup onto the orange slices. Each of these 4 sweet pleasures contains 85 calories.
Crunchy healthy snacks up to 100 calories
Frozen grapes. This is an ideal healthy snack if you want to eat something sweet. Wash and pick the grapes off the stem and arrange them on a kitchen paper so that they won’t touch one another. Put them in the freezer, and after freezing, put them in a zip lock bag and place them back again in the freezer. Whenever you want to eat some chocolate, take 10 frozen grapes and the desire for sweet food will be satisfied.
Baby carrots. Eat 10 baby carrots and you won’t consume more than 60-70 calories. While you’re nibbling them the desire for salty fried snacks will go away.
Popcorn. You can eat up to 3 cups of popped popcorn. Just make sure that you’ve popped the popcorn without any oil.
Peanuts. Fill two tablespoons with peanuts. That way you won’t consume more than 100 calories, and it’ll be a great substitute when you want to eat potato chips.
Additional tips about how to handle food cravings
Don’t make a meal out of a snack. You should never have snacks that contain more than 150 calories, because then you’ll actually have a small meal rather than snack. Snacks should help you maintain your energy levels and eliminate the feeling of hunger until the next meal, not to feed you.
Eat slowly. Just like the main meal, you should eat the snack slowly. The brain needs 15-20 minutes to get the message that you have eaten.
Eat fresh fruits and vegetables. Most fruits and vegetables contain under 100 calories, so you’ll never make a mistake if you choose to satisfy the desire for eating with an apple, orange, cucumber, celery, carrots or broccoli.
Always keep healthy snacks in the kitchen. Keep snacks in small bags ready to be eaten. That way you’ll always have something ready to eat like for example, a homemade mix of dried fruits and nuts.
Always keep fresh cucumber and small carrots in the refrigerator, and frozen fruit in the freezer. It has been proven that if you have healthy snacks at hand, it will be less likely that you’ll reach for potato chips or chocolate.
