Food companies have conditioned us to believe that when we have the slightest twinge of hunger, that we should reach for a snack, while we are going to tell you the complete opposite - to drop the snacks. For years, we've been conditioned that any time we feel slightly hungry, or its been 3 hours that we should have a snack. As nutritionist, we're going to tell you to drop the snacks if you really want to lose weight and keep it off.
When you think snack - do you automatically think of celery, nuts or a protein shake? Probably not! Well, maybe if you've listened to me talk for long enough. Most of the snacks we choose are full of sugar and a whole bunch of stuff we can't even pronounce.
Next time you find yourself wanting to eat after just 2-3 hours of finishing a meal, examine what that previous meal consisted of. Did it have protein, fat, greens (veggies) and fiber? Or was it full of carbohydrates which caused your insulin to spike and is now coming to a crash, leaving you hungry and looking for the closest snack.
The problem with snacking is that it can sabotage your metabolism and reduce your fat loss, especially for those on a "diet". Snacking - due to its spike in insulin and then drop, can leave most of us much hungrier, and thus defeating all our efforts to eat better and lose weight. Constant snacking keeps our insulin levels up, which turns off our bodies ability to release and burn fat. All you have to do is look at any magazine or social media platform to see that the most popular fad diets right now are all about reducing sugar (hello Keto) and intermittent fasting (IMF) which incorporates windows of times in which we fast and don't eat.
So drop the snacks, focus on eating three regular meals with protein, fat, greens and fiber and fast at night for about 10-12 hours. This gives your body the chance to decrease insulin levels and become a fat burning machine. This is exactly what we teach our clients when we work one on one with them.
*Some individuals/athletes may need what we call a "bridge" or "gap" snack based on their training or exercise program, or if the time between lunch and dinner is greater than 5 hours.
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intermittent fasting, keto, snacking
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