Will a serving a trail mix keep me satisfied?

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_lyndseybrooke_
_lyndseybrooke_ Posts: 2,561 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I've been eating a banana (120 calories) or 24 pretzels with 1 tbsp natural peanut butter (245 calories) as my afternoon snack, depending on how many calories I have to spare that day. I'm pretty sick of those snacks and I'd really like to use the recipe below to make my own trail mix:

1 cup almonds
1 cup cashews
1/2 cup banana chips
1/2 cup dried pineapple chunks
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Now, as with pretty much any trail mix, this will be about 150 calories per 1/4 cup serving. Now, when I look at my 1/4 cup measuring device, I wonder what on earth that amount of nuts and fruit will do for me. My snack occurs around 3:30 in the afternoon (breakfast at 8:30, lunch at 12:30, dinner at 6:30) at my desk at work. A banana barely does anything for me, and that's a lot more than 1/4 cup of food. Since it's nuts, will it be more satisfying than a piece of fruit? The good thing is that one batch will last me about 2.5 weeks.

I'm looking for a snack that I can make ahead of time and is convenient at work, but is substantial enough to keep me going until dinner time. Any suggestions for snacks like that would be awesome.

Replies

  • _lyndseybrooke_
    _lyndseybrooke_ Posts: 2,561 Member
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    No responses?
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
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    Go ahead and give it a try. Just make sure you measure carefully and calculate the calories accurately. The nuts can be satisfying because they are relatively high in fat.

    For me personally a "serving" of trail mix is pitifully small. I have one serving and immediately think I should have one or three more.

    Remember that trail mix is intentionally made to be energy dense, low volume food intended to be consumed while doing vigorous outdoor activities. It's great for backpacking and cross-country cycling and the like.
  • Kanuenue
    Kanuenue Posts: 253 Member
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    Bananas vs. Nuts. Sounds crazy :)

    But in response to your question, I usually eat a serving of fruit & nut trail mix (recipe below) as a hearty snack then eat again in 3 hours. The fiber and protein in the trail mix gives it some staying power that fruit alone doesn't do for me. I would omit the chocolate chips. Unless you are using very dark chocolate, you are just adding sugar and fat with very little nutrients. And watch out for banana chips, often they are fried and sugared. Make sure the fruit you use is low-temp baked or dehydrated without added sugar.

    I do a single serving of trail mix:
    1 ounce dried fruit (berries, pineapple, pears, and figs are my faves)
    1/2 ounce almonds
    1/4 ounce pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds)
    1/4 ounce cashews or coconut shaveings
  • brynnsmom
    brynnsmom Posts: 945 Member
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    One serving of trail mix has never been able to do it for me. I love it but refuse to buy it anymore because I'll be halfway through a bag in no time. I know nuts are supposed to be filling, but a 1/4 cup serving just seems tiny! Do you like Greek yogurt or cottage cheese? Or swap the pretzels out for an apple and a piece of cheese? Fruit and yogurt usually keep me full for awhile. Or hard boiled eggs even, if you like those.
  • NitaBethT
    NitaBethT Posts: 5
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    That sounds goods, but one of the things that worked for me was to buy organic apples, slice an apple into sections pour a little lemon juice into a bowl and then let the pieces absorb it over night. In the morning I would bag up my slices and take them into work. That really helped because apples help control blood sugar levels and I could snack on them whenever I wanted.

    Another thing that I would do is to make my own healthy cookies for snacking on. I always use honey instead of sugar in my recipes and there were quite a few that were really good recipes published in a lot of different magazines. I also substituted the flour with a barley/oat flour mixture so that I had better grains than processed flours and then added a little flax seed to that mix. You can pretty much adapt any cookie recipe but as I said there were a few really good ones from healthy sources, too.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    How could anyone possibly predict what is going to satisfy you? You're asking a question that cannot be answered as everyone is going to be different here.

    Personally, I eat an apple and 1 oz of almonds pretty much every afternoon...it's a snack...as snacks go I find it pretty satisfying.

    Why not just give it a whirl and see what happens?

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