"to snack or not to snack: That's the question"

malena43

The trouble with this is, if you go read 10 different books, blogs etc, you will invariably get 10 different opinions on what to do or what not to do. A drop in metabolism is overrated as a reason to just go eat. Learn to feel hunger between meals. Personally, I eat 3 squares and a top up around 3 - 3.30 in the afternoon - so roughly 4 hourly feeds. Eat protein with each meal, keep carbs down, esp simple carbs (to be avoided in general), don't forget your healthy fats (that includes saturated fats), limit your fruit intake to 1 - 2 serves a day (you don't need the fructose - get your fibre from veg), eat as much salad and veg as comfortable for you when you have your meals, and after all that, hunger should not be an issue between meals if your daily water intake is sufficient (30ml per kg body weight) and evenly spread over the course of the day. The age old "eat like a king for breakfast, eat like a prince for lunch and eat like a pauper for dinner" should take care of the snacking issues.

I love your advice!! Thanks.!!!

melindasuefritz

yes snack
100 calorie packs, fruit, pretzels, popcorn, whatever

malena43

Thanks everyone!!!! I lost .5 pound this week yay!!! I hope is not only water!!

tigersword

Eating little and often is good and keeps your metabolism going at a good pace. If you're hungry then eat! just make sure its something healthy that will give you energy. A few nuts, a piece of fruit or some carrot sticks. Whoever heard of no snacks? As long as they're healthy I don't see the issue.

Whoever heard of no snacks? Pretty much everyone who lived before 1980. Snacking between meals is a pretty recent phenomenon. People used to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And that was it. Going back about 200 years, people ate one meal a day. So over time we've started eating more and more often, and obesity has been getting worse and worse. Coincidence?

Yeah, you know, they were pretty poor and sick back then too... Coincidence?

Yeah, because they were sick due to meal frequency, and only ate one meal a day due to being poor.

Maybe you should study some history. People were sick due to a lack of sanitation, had nothing at all to do with eating patterns, mostly it was due to contaminated water. As for eating one meal a day, they simply didn't have time to eat multiple times per day, people worked 14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Get up at sunrise, start working. After a few hours take a break to eat. Go back to work until sundown. Go home and go to sleep. Wake up around midnight to socialize for an hour or so, then go back to sleep until sunrise and repeat.

We have always eaten one large meal per day (or every 2-3 days, depending on food supply.) this is why the human body evolved to store fat so readily and easily, due to the fact that we aren't really expected to be constantly shoving food in our faces, because, quite frankly, until a few decades ago there just wasn't enough food available for that sort of behavior.

mistesh

Diet induced thermogenesis is not frequency based.

"Diet induced thermogenesis (DIT) can be defined as the increase in energy expenditure above basal fasting level divided by the energy content of the food ingested and is commonly expressed as a percentage. It is, with basal metabolic rate and activity induced thermogenesis, one of the three components of daily energy expenditure. Although DIT is the smallest component, it could play a role in the development and/or maintenance of obesity."

http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/5

"Basically, thermogenesis is the number of calories burned when the body breaks down the food you eat."

http://www.livestrong.com/article/469048-define-dietary-induced-thermogenesis/

So just calories? What happens if you focus on heath rather than calories?

SanjuMelts

Have more filling meals! Greens are a good way to stay full on low calories... also lifting can also boost your metabolism