How to Snack Well

As a personal trainer who specializes in weight loss, I am constantly being asked “what am I doing wrong”? I then begin to ask some questions and the resounding response is snacking and portion size.

The remedy to both is sometimes the same thing. If you eat food that is healthy you can often get a bad result if you have too much of it. If you want to snack, you can eat the right stuff but again too much of it.

The best advice I can give you is to read the label. Most of the foods we buy comes in a package that allows you to find out how many calories are in a serving. We need to be careful that the serving size is not a trick. What I mean by this some companies give a small serving size that no one actually uses. Cereal is a good example. If you weight an ounce or cereal it is often half of what most people consider a bowl. Spray butter is another. They say it has no fat because one spray is less than a half a gram. When is the last time you only used one spray.

Next time you dole out a portion, look at how many portions are in the container. You can also buy a small food scale. After you use it on an item you can usually eyeball it for the next serving. Most people eat the same thing 80% of the time and eat new food item only on occasion. If you can learn the calories in the 80% the other 20% won't get you in much trouble.