How To Snack Smarter When You’re Watching Your Portions
Eating snacks can be quite tricky, especially if you’re not used to controlling portions, not just with meals but also with snacks. Oftentimes, it’s easy to lose track and overeat on healthy snacks. But it’s not something you can’t fix with smarter ways of eating. Listed below are the 8 tips you can follow for smarter and more controlled snacking habits.
Avoid Liquid Snacks
Whether you like it or not, fruit drinks or any mixed drinks for snacks won’t make you feel full. They may be right portions but finishing it in one gulp or two can really make you grab for another which is bad. The only liquid you should be drinking often is water and only water.
As much as possible, snacks should be in solid form. Not only do they make you chew, but they also make you feel full much quicker. Just take your time eating and drink plenty of water. After all, crunchy snacks make you feel a little more full than soft ones.
Never Eat While Multi-Tasking
Just like how you eat popcorn in the movies, you just can’t stop eating until it’s all gone; and when it is, you might even grab some from your seatmate, if they’ve still got some left. All the action and talking gets you in a trance that you aren’t so conscious about just how much you’ve already eaten. And that’s really bad.
Now, this can be a problem for you when you’re watching your portions. There’s a high tendency for you to overeat when you’re watching a movie or doing something else that grabs most of your attention because you unconsciously pop one after the other. So it’s better to eat with focus or not at all. It’s better if you eat before or after you watch that new action movie.
Get a Smaller Bowl
Now, this might seem a little weird but it definitely works. Think about a bowl so small, you just force everything to fit inside it. When you’re watching your portions, a small bowl can help it make look like it’s already a lot; but in reality, it’s just the right amount. With smaller bowls, you first start to trick your mind that you have more than enough for your meal.
Smaller bowls also don’t tempt you to add more just to fill it in because you simply have no more space. A smaller bowl and a huge amount of discipline will definitely help you control your portions. After all, they’re snacks and not meals, so they’d most probably be more appropriate for bowls.
Choose Chewables
Not those vitamins you hear on TV or see on ads, but snacks that make you chew and chew non-stop until it gets finished. But not just that, you need to thoroughly chew your food. According to lots of studies, chewing much more slowly helps trick your brain that you’re full.
The best chewables that lets you chew thoroughly are nuts, namely almonds, cashews, and peanuts, crunchy vegetables like celery, fruits like apple, and kale chips. These kinds of snacks have that crunch to keep you chewing until they’re fine bits and piece. What a great way to trick your brain while enjoying a good crunch.
Get that Fiber
If you’re the type who gets hungry easily, you should definitely have fiber in your snacks. One study showed that having fiber as snacks also helped them lose weight. People also felt fuller with these type of snacks. Additionally, your bowel movements are also better. Win-win, right?
Perfect examples of high-fiber snacks are oatmeal, sweet potatoes, kale chips, prunes, bananas, apples, mangoes, and strawberries. Vegetables like broccoli, beets, carrots, and spinach are also great sources of fiber. Beans and legumes are also a great source of fiber. Nuts, too, are also rich in fiber. Mix and match these foods for a vibrant-colored snack.
Stick to Your Eating Schedule
There are just those times where you start to feel like you’re hungry. But are you really? A key to a successful diet is to stick with your eating schedule. If you eat way too early or way too late after the scheduled time, the tendency is you’re not going to follow your portions or even your diet.
To avoid this kind of mess, you can set up alarms to remind you that’s it’s snack time. When you feel like eating earlier than that, try to fight off the urge. This develops into a good habit that’s pretty hard to resist in the long run. Just remember that discipline will get you somewhere.
Go for Combo Snacks
Just a bit of everything can be overwhelming enough to make you feel full. A mix of a few proteins like almonds and peanuts with two or three pieces of crackers finished off with a few grapes can be a well-balanced yet diverse snack that could also be fun.
The differences in texture and sizes of these snacks can be a joy ride for your palate each snack time. You can also try mixing up high-low combinations like a good portion of avocado plus some kale or sweet potato chips can do the job. Regardless of what combination you choose, mixing the different foods relative to your portions will also keep your snacks interesting.
Rest Up
It may seem like this isn’t connected to smarter snacking but it is. In fact, it has a significant effect on your snacking habits. If you lack rest, you’re most likely to eat more than you should; ruining your diet, altogether. You can either have a higher tendency to eat more during unusual times or not eat at all. Lack of sleep also leads to lack of appetite because you’re just more focused on when you can get a good night’s sleep.
Lack of sleep can also give you stress that ultimately leads to stress-eating. You trick yourself into thinking you deserve more food than more sleep. So as much as possible get more hours of sleep than calories. You don’t want to ruin your diet and your sleeping patterns, right?
Conclusion
All of these tips all require one thing: discipline. Regardless if you’ve followed all these tips, you still need to be disciplined enough to watch over what you eat and how much you’ve been eating. Good habits for good health.