Snacking is making you fat

Snacking is making you fat

1. The wrong snacks versus the right snacks.

The first reason that snacking is wrong is the type of food people snack on.

Generally you may choose processed high carbohydrate, high GI snacks such as wheat biscuits, cakes, brownies, cookies and other tasty morsels.

The problem with all the snack type foods is that the calorie content is quite high and they are not filling you and they are digested quite quickly.

So what is the right snack?

The answer is don’t snack.

You should be eating a small nutritious meal that contains a portion of protein and a portion of higher volume lower calorie carbohydrates.

When you are hungry.

This may consist of a sandwich or small wrap with a small quantity of chicken breast and some salad on the sandwich.

Or leftovers from last nights nutritious meal.

No not pizza.

Just in case your wondering, bread is not your enemy. Calories are your enemy. Bread has few calories.

You have been lied to about bread again.

This meal will not only give you the right nutritional content but you won’t be hungry for a while after this meal.

1. What happens after snacking

After you have your high calorie, high sugar, high fat snacks that have little volume your sugar levels go up and then down sharply.

You will be hungry in an hour or 2 hours and you will probably end up having the same meal that you could have had when you had the snack.

Now you have quite literally doubled your calories and more than doubled your carbohydrates and fats.

Then a few hours later you may have a similar snack then followed by dinner.

In one day you will have had 2 small sized high calorie snacks and 3 meals and you have convinced yourself that you don’t eat a lot of food.

1. What should you change

   • Get rid of the mid morning and mid afternoon snacks and eat proper meals when you are hungry.

   • Eat a protein portion and high volume, high fibre carbohydrates at each meal.

   • Eat salad or vegetables at each meal.

   • Eat 3 to 4 meals per day and avoid snacking.

The biggest problem that we have in society is snack breaks and the idea that we need snacks. We really don’t need snacks but it’s built into our thinking that we need a snack to keep us going.

If your blood sugar is already high and you are pre diabetic, the last thing you need is a sugary snack.

You need low GI and low glycemic load food with protein to reduce the GI further through making the foods more complex to digest.

These are foods that have less carbohydrates and that have slower burning carbohydrates. That means that your blood sugar will not be raised as high.

1. Lifestyle changes

In order to get the results that you desire, you need to change your lifestyle which means removing the habits that are stopping you reaching your goals.

Snacking is the worst thing that you can do when your goal is weight loss.

You don’t need to eat more often to boost your metabolism.

You need to move more to boost your metabolism. Go for walks during your work day as much as you can.

Most of all get rid of your snacks. You don’t need them.