Unhealthy Snacks

I do believe that healthy snacking is an important part of eating a balanced diet.  Eating a healthy snack, like fruit or low fat yogurt, between meals helps to keep you feeling satisfied throughout the day and helps you not to over eat at meal time.

However, unhealthy snacks can cause spikes in your blood sugar, leaving you with that afternoon "crash". Here is a list of a few snacks to avoid:

1. Doughnuts. High in sugar, trans-fats, and calories doughnuts are not only bad for your waistline, but bad for your energy levels as well. The high sugar content is likely to end in a midday crash. If you crave a doughnut, try a piece of whole-grain toast with 1 TBSP all natural peanut butter.
2. Soft Drinks. There just isn't anything nutritious about soda, whether it's diet or regular. Don't be fooled because the drink is diet - there is nothing healthy about them and in fact diet drinks can actually make you add on extra pounds!  Instead of a soda, try some sparkling water with lemon, unsweetened tea, or just plain water.
3.  French Fries: Actually anything fried - from chicken to potatoes to vegetables - should be avoided. Deep-fried foods contain trans fats that are bad for your body. If you want finger foods, opt for carrot sticks, low-fat mozzarella cheese sticks, or grapes.
4. Chips: Chips of any kind are usually fried so are therefore high in fat and salt.  Instead of chips opt for healthier choices like cut up fruits and veges, apple slices, or a hand full of almonds.  This way you still get the crunch without all the calories.

Healthy Snack Choices

I happen to believe that healthy snacking is an important part of eating a well balanced diet.  Eating healthy snacks between breakfast and lunch and then again between lunch and dinner helps to keep you from becoming too hungry and then either over eating or making poor food choices at meal time.

Starting off you day with a healthy breakfast is the beginning of a great food day.  Add a little protein to your breakfast to help keep you feeling full for a longer period of time.  Skip the sweets like donuts or pastries and opt for Kashi cereals or oatmeal topped with fresh fruit and a few almonds or walnuts and make sure you use skim or low fat milk.

For your morning snack choose low fat yogurt (make sure it does not contain high fructose corn syrup or any artificial sweeteners) and top it with fresh berries, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a couple of chopped walnuts.

For your afternoon snack I recommend you follow Elvis’s lead and eat a sliced banana with a heaping tablespoon of all natural peanut butter.

Here are a few other healthy snack options:

• Fruit smoothies: Opt to make your own with fresh or frozen fruit, low fat yogurt, a little light vanilla soy milk, and a dash of cinnamon – store bought smoothies may contain high fat yogurts or ice cream.
• Berries: They are sweet, easy to pop into your mouth, and a much healthier choice than a candy bar. Raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and blackberries are all anti-inflammatory, rich in flavonoids (compounds to protect cells against damage) and offer immune-boosting antioxidant activity.
• Cut Up Vegetables: The fiber in veggies will help fill you up, and they provide a nice, satisfying crunch. Choose a wide range of colors (broccoli, cauliflower and carrots are good choices). I like to keep baby carrots and cut broccoli on hand to have an easy to reach for snack.
• Nuts: When eaten sparingly, nuts are a great snack. Walnuts are rich in omega-3 fatty acids.  Nuts can be high in calories and fat (even if it's the healthy monounsaturated kind) so watch your portion control.
• Dark chocolate: An ounce of dark chocolate now and then will satisfy a sweet tooth while providing antioxidant polyphenols (A kind of chemical that may protect against some common health problems and possibly certain effects of aging). Choose high quality dark chocolate with at least 70 percent pure cocoa, and enjoy the rich flavor.

Healthy Energy Boosting Snacks

Most of us get the urge to snack through-out the day. The key is not to starve yourself so that you make unhealthy choices at meal time but to eat 2 healthy snacks between meals every day. That means eat one snack between breakfast and lunch and another healthy snack between lunch and dinner. Here are a few great choices:

1. Low fat String Cheese

2. Low fat or fat -free yogurt with a hand full of walnuts or almonds and blueberries (make sure your yogurt is all natural and does not contain artificial sweeteners. My favorite is Stoneyfield Farms brand)

3. Banana Slices and a TLB of all natural peanut butter - (Yes - Elvis Style!)

4. Cut Up Apple and a TLB of all natural peanut butter.

5. Cut up watermelon, pineapple, or grapefruit.

Cut up fresh fruit and veges give you a stamina boost, plus the nutritional benefits of fiber, vitamins and minerals without adding unhealthy fats or sugar to your daily diet.

Instead of Drinking Diet Soda

It is a myth that if you want to lose weight you should drink diet soda. I have even seen "experts" on diet and exercise promote this idea as a "revolutionary" weight loss idea. Let me first start by saying...I used to be a diet coke junkie. Every once and a while my husband and I still reminisce about the good old days of frosty, diet sodas with little ice chips floating around the glass on a hot Texas day...mmmm...but I digress...

Research shows that people who drink diet drinks on a regular basis may be more likely to gain weight and develop metabolic syndrome, a condition that includes having excess belly fat, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and insulin resistance. The artificial sweeteners in diets sodas interfere with signals in the brain that help your body judge how may calories you have already ingested and make it difficult for your body to determine how much you really need to eat. Not to mention that studies also show that sodas can cause erosion of tooth enamel. (Women's Day Mag April 2009).

So - what to drink - choose better alternatives: water, unsweetened iced tea, green or black tea, low fat milk, and small amounts of 100% fruit juice.

Health and Diet Sodas

Eat This Not That

I am starting this section to help give us better food and drink choices. I will periodically add to this topic when I find great healthier food choices I want to share. The first up in this section is:


Diet Soda
I want to start this topic by first saying that I used to be a soda drinker. I drank cokes as a kid and switched to diet drinks as a teenager. It was not until I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 36 that I decided to give up all soft drinks and artificial sweeteners.

In an article in the January 2009 edition of Prevention Magazine it is stated that in a 2008 study, researchers linked drinking just one diet soda a day with metabolic syndrome – the collection of symptoms including belly fat that puts you at high risk for heart disease and diabetes. Researchers are not sure if it’s an ingredient in diet soda or the drinker’s eating habits that caused the association.

My play on the topic…cut out the sodas altogether, regular and diet. Artificial sweeteners are just not a good thing. Although they have been approved by the FDA as safe to consume, we still need to keep in mind that by adding artificial sweeteners to our food and drink, we are still eating something that has no nutritional value and does not function like food in our systems. Remember our goal is for food just to be food.

Smarter Sub: Water, Unsweetened Iced Tea, Flavored Seltzer Water (make sure to read the label, you never know what is in a product until you read the list of ingredients), 100% Fruit Juice (small amounts), Green & Black Teas, fat-free or low-fat milk .

If you can’t stop “cold turkey”, consider decreasing the amount you drink gradually. Remember, every step you can take towards a healthier diet, is a step in the right direction. Instead of sweeteners try light vanilla soy milk in your coffee and tea.