The enormous choice of sugary snacks and beverages makes it challenging to maintain a healthy weight. Many of us including myself have become grazers. What we consume between meals can derail our desire to maintain our calorie intake and eat healthily – we need to snack the right way.
Why do we graze?
There are many reasons why we graze: boredom, habit, hunger, comfort eating, treating ourselves or people giving us snacks.
Biscuits, crisps, chocolate and sugary drinks have been my snacks of choice when I need to graze. But consuming these was not going to help me hit my weight goals.
So how did I lose weight and then go on to maintain a healthy weight?
Initially I attempted to stick to 3 meals a day and no snacks, but this was impractical with shift working so I ended up snacking again. Also, it just made me hungry all the time, I needed a pick me up and it felt like too big of a sacrifice.
I wanted to find a way to remain a grazer but swap out the high calorie, bad stuff. The food and drink I consumed needed to change so I got to testing and experimenting.
I found the following filled the snack gap, and it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice. They also helped me reduce my sugar intake, something which was a constant battle, although I’m aware of the negative consequences of a high sugar diet, so it was well worth the battle.
These work for me, see what you think, tweak them, change them, find what works for you – but persist, this is a solution which I believe will work long-term, snack the right way or fad diet?
Tea and coffee
The use of tea and coffee is a great way to reduce the amount of calories consumed as a grazer. Whenever I feel snackie between meals, to avoid consuming unnecessary calories I turn to tea and coffee.
Yes, these could be considered boring, but Tea and coffee doesn’t have to be boring. But there are many options available to add variety. To add variety consider the following:
Coffee – hot, cold brewed, iced, instant, percolated, cafetiere, decaf, flavoured with syrups (many are sugar free).
Tea – hot, cold brewed, iced, Green, Black, fruit, flavoured and caffeine free.
Normal instant coffee and English tea are still extremely popular, but to supplement snacks it’s nice to have some variety. The options are potentially limitless, there are many products available for different tastes and occasions.
Important: the purpose of these drinks is to reduce snacking on high calorie foods, so avoid beverages that have lots of added calories.
Low calorie soft drinks
This is another way I like to supplement snacks, there are loads of low calorie soft drinks, either fizzy or non-fizzy in pretty much any flavour.
The introduction of artificial sweeteners has provided us with lots of nice tasting drinks but without the unnecessary calories.
I’m not personally a fan of consuming too many artificial sweeteners because I don’t like the taste of some of them and I don’t know what the impact of them is on my health is.
However, I will drink them now and again as a treat, but I tend to have cordial which comes in many different flavours, I’ll add it to plain or fizzy water.
There’s also the option of drinks which have a hint of flavour, bottled soft drinks which have less sugar and sweeteners, which provide a subtle flavour for people who aren’t keen on water.
My personal preference is simply flavouring fizzy water with lime or lemon and adding some ice, it’s refreshing, low calorie and especially nice on a hot day. But be careful not to consume too much, because the acidity in the citrus fruits can damage enamel.
Just plain water
Plain water may seem to be a copout in a blog post titled “how to snack the right way”. But please read on, sometimes weight loss requires a different strategy.
Although this is not everyone’s drink of choice, it’s one of my favourite, I’m a big fan of plain and fizzy water.
They’re refreshing and zero calories, they’re useful to suppress hunger when feeling snacky, I have a glass of water before a meal because it suppresses my appetite a little bit.
Plain water is great because if you don’t mind drinking it from the tap it’s the cheapest drink available.
Ice lollies, ice pops
When feeling peckish these are a great option, they feel like food. Also unlike a chocolate biscuit they last longer before being consumed.
There’s a large variety of options, many of them natural fruit. They come in lots of flavours including orange, coconut, lemonade and strawberry, and not only are they potentially full of vitamins but they’re great on a hot day.
They’re pretty reasonably priced although the cheaper ones do tend to come packed with sugar, but they’ll be better than snacking on biscuits or crisps.
You could always experiment and make your own, there are lots of different mould designs available.
Juicing to snack the right way
A great way to snack between meals and provide yourself with vitamins and minerals is fruit and vegetable juices. Ideally make your own, but they can be purchased premade.
When you make them yourself you know what goes into them and they’re generally cheaper homemade. However you have to invest in a juicer and they can be a pain to clean.
A juice which I love and find surprising tasty is carrot and ginger juice, it’s easy to make and when ice is added its surprisingly even better.
You can experiment with using all sorts of fruits and vegetables: apples, oranges, cucumber, celery or kale. Obviously not all vegetables can be juiced so it’s worth doing a bit of research and checking out some recipes.
Juice is great, it can be adapted to your personal taste, they can be low in calories, filling and tasty.
However juicing destroys the fibre in whole fruit and veg. But if this is an alternative to a bag of crisps and chocolate bar – I think we know which would be better for our health.
Fruit and vegetables
When we want to snack on something sweet fruit is an excellent option. This along with vegetables chopped up would always be a great alternative to snacking on unhealthy treats.
In contrast to juicing the fruit and vegetables retain the fibre which is essential for a healthy digestive system.
Raw fruit and veg is also filling, reasonably cheap and healthy for us. However, if vegetables wouldn’t be your first option as a snack, there are options. Liven them up a little with some low calorie dips such as mint and low fat yoghurt or hummus.
Consider however that fruit can contain a lot of sugar, so like anything it should be consumed in moderation.
So discover the types of fruits and vegetables you like and use them as a tasty snack. My personal preference is chopped peppers, chopped cucumbers, pomegranate seeds, watermelon and cherries.
Popcorn
This is something that has grown in popularity. It’s no longer just sweet or salted, options include: caramel, toffee, and chocolate…whatever flavour you want – including many savoury options.
The only trouble with all the flavoured popcorns is that they generally have a lot of added calories. Plain popcorn is best.
If this doesn’t tingle your taste buds, get yourself a popcorn maker. Experiment with ingredients, this way you’d be able to regulate what goes into it and manage your calories.
I like plain popcorn because it’s low in calories, it provides fibre, it’s filling, is gluten-free, easy to make at home and it’s relatively cheap.
So to summarise “snack the right way”…
These options will make you think and provide you with an alternative to snacking on high calorie, high fat snacks.
If they don’t appeal, take them as inspiration, discover what healthy snacks work for you.
They work for me, something to snack on between meals. After wondering why I wasn’t losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight, I realised unhealthy snacking was my problem.
It took time and habit building, but I started replacing my old snacks with these. It was well worth, I now maintain a healthy weight and haven’t put weight on for a number of years. If you have those last few pounds to lose – snack the right way, get over that finish line.
These work because unlike dieting you don’t feel as though you’re making a sacrifice, dieting unfortunately is a short-term thing, nearly impossible to maintain long-term.
What we need is a way of eating that we can maintain throughout our lives, without feeling like we’re missing out too much.
In my opinion this is one of those things that can be used to help supplement your diet to help you become healthier and happier for the long-term, so good luck.