Snack: 6 Tips to Lighten Your Snacks
Anticipate your snack, make the right choices, manage portions, choose raw products... Discover Sarah Marin, Nutritionist at Make Me Healthy, tips and tricks for a light but fun meal!
A snack during the day is important because it allows you to break up your diet. Snack is one of the meals of the day that should be included in calculating calories, when one wants to control energy intake for the day.
Dividing your diet into four meals a day helps regulate and stabilize blood sugar (blood sugar levels) and avoid peak hypoglycemia.
Thus, we reduce the risk of uncontrollable snack cravings (when coming home from the office for example, we are less inclined to throw ourselves in the fridge) and reduce the amounts we eat during other meals, because we get to the table less hungry...
Plan a healthy and complete snack
If you want to favor certain foods for a healthy snack, you should adapt your snack according to the rest of the day and your energy expenditure.
Here's a balanced snack:
Fresh seasonal fruits, preferably organic
A handful of oilseeds (almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts) for their good fatty acid content. Not to be confused with dried fruits, which are fructose concentrates and are therefore sweeter.
- If you need to increase your energy intake, you can add a dairy product such as plain yogurt (with cow's milk, goat's milk, almond milk, soy milk, etc.)
You can also choose a slice of whole wheat bread with a square of 75% dark chocolate with cocoa or a slice of bread with oilseed puree (ground almonds or hazelnuts) for sale in organic stores.
On the other hand, if you eat bread and your energy expenditure isn't high that day (if you don't do any physical activity), consider reducing or eliminating starchy foods in the evening.
Resist some foods
For your snack to remain a healthy meal, certain foods must be discarded and removed from your cupboards, such as industrially processed products, which are always too sweet, salty, or too high in saturated fats (cakes, chips, etc.). They have no nutritional value.
Also, if you choose fruit as a snack, eat whole fresh fruit instead of compote, as chewing not only makes you feel full, but you'll also benefit from fibre, transit allies.
Stay hydrated
Taking a break at the end of the afternoon is also an opportunity to hydrate. The drink will allow you to settle even more.
Choose sugar-free herbal teas, or infused water (with cucumbers, lemons, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, etc.) by choosing seasonal and organic fruits. When soaking the fruit, it is critical to choose them from organic farming, to reduce the risk of pesticide presence.
Stay reasonable...even in the bakery!
At snack time, you pass a bakery... and you can't resist. The right choice in this case? Fresh cut fruit (not to be confused with sweet fruit salads) with Fromage Blanc. All you have to do is pour fresh fruit into the cheese and enjoy!
Give yourself a real break
To really improve and enjoy that snack break, stop what you're doing. Take your time to eat quietly, even if you're only 5 minutes away from the hustle and bustle or your computer.
Also remember to diversify the pleasures so that you do not get bored, because despite being healthy, the snack should still be a moment of pleasure!
Expect quantities
The best way to avoid discrepancies is to plan your snack and plan portions according to your energy needs. For example, instead of putting a 500-gram bag on your desk, take a handful of almonds that you need and put them in a small box, which you will take with you in the morning. Thus, you will not be tempted, sometimes without even realizing it in front of your computer, to take down the whole package of almonds...Keep
Always your snack, so you don't fall for anything during the day, in case you're a little hungry...