Snacking - Morning, Noon, and Night

I would be the first to tell you that snacking is definitely one of the things that has contributed to my weight gain over the course of my life. But it's not the act of snacking that was really my problem, it was snacking without tracking or measuring, eating mindlessly. It was snacking because I was bored and not necessarily hungry.

Tracking food on SparkPeople has helped a lot, and I have instituted a personal rule that I have to track before I snack. This takes away mindless eating because I have to actively add the information to my log before I put it in my mouth.

The second benefit is that I have to measure or weigh what I'm going to eat.  I can't say enough how important it is to have a good kitchen scale when you are trying to lose weight. It's so easy to under or over estimate the weight of you food and it can really throw off carb, fat, and calorie counts. This is the one I have  and here is another great one. High fat and high calorie foods can have huge impact even when the difference seems small. The green muffin cup has 1.5 oz of almonds in it, the pink one has 1 oz.  It's only a difference of about 12 almonds, but it's 80 more calories, 3 more carbs, and 7 more grams of fat. Even if you are trying to eat a high fat diet, that can add up pretty quickly.

The good thing about doing a lower carb diet right now is that lot of the traditional snacking foods that are high in calories are also high in carbs and those are currently off the table.  This is allowing me to reset my snacking habits while still eating between meals.  So what do I snack on?

Some of my favorites include:

• Hard boiled eggs
• 1 oz of Almonds (very filling with a great combination of fiber, fat, and protein)
• 1 oz of cheese
• 1 oz hummus with cucumbers and red pepper strips (pictured above) or carrot sticks

While a lot of people trying to lose weight struggle with snacking at night and put rules about not eating after 8:00 PM, I need to eat at night or I'm so hungry in the morning that I make bad breakfast choices.  Now, however, I making much healthier snacking choices and when I am snacking in the evening I'm practicing mindful eating as opposed to inserting food into my mouth without really thinking about it.

As of this morning I'm down 14.5 lbs, 2.5 lbs from my first mini goal, 47.5 lbs left to go.  I'm starting to see the weight loss in my face.