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 Weight Loss & Snacking Between Meals

Written by Sky Taylor, Diet Bites

Diet Article: Do you have difficultly resisting snacking between meals?


It takes a lot of willpower to resist the urge to snack or graze between meals. If you have more than fifty pounds to lose, your snacking may have reverted from three per day to 'on the hour' snacks. They can certainly be as addictive as those second and third servings of our favorite foods at meal time.

To see if you have a snacking problem that may be contributing to your weight gain issues, choose the most accurate response below:

a. I never snack, although I have several pounds that I need to lose.

Oh dear - what could be contributing to this overage of weight when snacking isn't the culprit. It could be several things - from overeating at meal time to eating too many calories based on personal height and activity level.

The weight gain could also be related to a hormone balance, something that occurs more in women than in men. This is a good time to check-up with your favorite doctor.

b. I never snack OR  I snack occasionally and I'm at my recommended weight.

You are exactly where you should be and have learned how to manage your weight. You deserve a golden peach!

c. I enjoy a snack two to three times per day and experience weight gain issues.

Snacking in-between meals can assist in keeping blood sugar levels but at times, it can also contribute to weight gain. Given such, take a look at the snacks that you're choosing. Are they generally loaded with sugar and mined with dietary fat? These type snacks generally include doughnuts, cookies, candy bars and cake. Just typing those foods makes my own mouth water - but even so, these higher calorie, higher fat snacks should be resisted.


Try trading them out for healthier choices. Here are a few to experiment with:

- Trade potato, corn, cheese and tortilla chips for pretzels.

- Substitute cheese and crackers for a boiled egg and a whole lot of protein grams.

- Substitute cookies, pie, pastries and doughnuts for a fresh, frozen or canned fruit selection.

Try this weight loss tip for a week; weigh at the beginning of your experiment and on the morning after the experiment has ended. Did you lose weight? If not, make sure that you didn't increase helpings or serving sizes at meal times. If you find that you did indeed drop pounds - then continue forward with this strategy as it's working to produce weight loss for you. Never mess with success.

d. I seem to snack continually and I'm struggling with weight gain issues.

Snacking can be a good thing and can help satisfy hunger before meal time so that we don't binge while dieting.  But some individuals find that once they start eating, they can't stop. This bullet point falls into the category that we referenced above.

The trouble with too many snacks is that the individual may settle into a habit of continuous eating. This will contribute greatly in the area of weight gain. They may gain so much weight that they think it impossible to lose back to their recommended weight. They are at an extreme risk for morbid obesity.

If this sounds familiar, continue forward on a weight loss plan which contains zero snacks OR limit them to two per day. Enjoy a piece of fresh fruit, a 1/2 cup serving of light cottage cheese or a rice or popcorn cake.

It's vital that you break the circle now or you face risk for morbid obesity and all of the healthy issues associated with such, including a steep grocery bill along with a steep doctor bill - and perhaps a much shorter life that you were intended to live.

You are much smarter than the foods that you eat and have the ability to control them; do this for you as you are definitely precious and deserve that healthier life waiting for you. Allow that thinner you that is imprisoned within to come out and greet the world.

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