subject: How Healthy Snacks Can Help You To Lose Weight [print this page] How Healthy Snacks Can Help You To Lose Weight
Is it possible that eating healthy snacks can make it possible to lose weight? Yes, it can, as long as you also follow healthy and moderate practices in other ways. Since it's very common to eat snacks without much thought, this is a bigger issue than you might think. So, if you're already watching other aspects of your life, improving the quality of your snacks may be the one missing ingredient that's holding you back from weight loss! Before you can even think about what snacks are healthiest, you have to learn to stay away from the ones that clearly aren't! Don't ignore this advice, as this is probably the single most critical step. This refers to low quality, empty calorie snacks that are high in sugar, salt and unhealthy carbohydrates. These are admittedly tasty things like potato chips, candy bars, cakes, cookies, donuts and other popular snacks. I would also include sugary drinks in this category, such as soda, sweetened fruit drinks and energy drinks. Some snacks dubbed healthy but that are only so-so include commercial brands of yogurt, bagels and muffins. You're certainly better off with these than the junky ones in the preceding section. If you're going for natural, unprocessed foods, however, they still leave much to be desired. The best kind are unsweetened, unprocessed natural foods that have healthy (if any) fats. A good example of a high protein food that has the healthy type of fat are many types of nuts. They aren't especially low calorie, so you should eat these in small quantities if you want to lose weight. Even a handful of trail mix that contains walnuts or cashews can be quite satisfying. Other examples are natural, unsweetened yogurt (you can add some honey or fresh fruit, far better than the added sugar of most brands), fresh fruit (especially apples, melons of any kind, mangoes, blueberries), avocados (more healthy fats), natural crackers with tahini or pure, unsweetened peanut (or other nut) butter, carrots and air-popped popcorn. Of course, losing weight also means paying attention to what you eat at your regular meals as well, and also getting regular exercise. Snacks can be important, but you have to look at the whole picture as well. These just some ideas for healthy snacks that can be part of your program to lose weight. The main thing is to pay attention to your daily snacking habits!
