Today, I’m sharing 7 healthy snacking tips so that you can snack without it derailing your health.
Our body seeks rhythm, in fact our clock genes control our circadian rhythm – when we wake up, when we eat, when we sleep. Peripheral organs like our thyroid, pancreas, large intestine, also have their own clocks and these clocks are more easily manipulated by food supply or the lack thereof.
One of the issues with snacking late in the evening is that it causes the peripheral circadian clocks to get out of sync with the master clock.
In today’s video, I share 7 tips to consider to keep you on track with snacking.
1. Create some guardrails around snacking in the evening so you don’t mess your internal clocks up and in so doing cause your hormones, and neurotransmitters to start working against you.
2. Choose real food that was not prepackaged for you.
- Avocado with salt/pepper.
- Hard boiled eggs.
- A few slices of meat.
- Plain yogurt with berries.
- Celery with nut butter.
- Cucumbers with goat cheese.
3. If you want dark chocolate, choose 90% or greater before 4pm. Ideally, you would want the fiber content to be the same or greater than the added sugar content.
4. Figs or dates paired with almonds, pecans, or walnuts are a great snack. I would just measure them out ahead of time, because nuts especially when there is a sweet food accompanying them, can end up being a caloric tsunami.
When it comes to snacking or not snacking, food quality is of greater value than the timing of food consumed. But eating real, whole foods and forgoing your late evening snack ritual is a powerful combination to making aggressive gains in your health.
5. A spoonful of raw honey. Consume honey if you’re going to be active or going to workout.
6. Herbal teas. They contain phytochemicals and have a medicinal effect and can help reduce fatigue, increase brain power, support stress resilience. Most people are not snacking out of true hunger but out of boredom.
7. Exercise snack. Do a set of squats, shoulder presses, or pull-ups. These exercise snacks help to overcome stress or boredom.
Recognize your own behavioral tendencies. Do you tend to binge if you go too long without food? Only you know what your capacity is to snack or not snack.
Quality of food is more important than whether or not you snack, but marrying them together will make for aggressive health momentum.
Want to take your health to the next level? Check out this post – 7 Healthy Eating Habits.
