Snacks can make you fat or LESS fat!....

Today's Post:  Friday, 6-15-2012

Snacks can make you fat, MUCH fatter in fact.

And, snacks can make you LESS fat and be a real asset for permanent fat loss.

Why?!

It depends mostly on what you eat and drink when you snack.  And to some degree it depends on how you snack.

A.  What you eat and drink when you snack is critical to whether your snacks make you fat and sick or help you lose fat and keep it off.

1.  What NOT to eat or drink:

First is the really unfortunate bad news.

Most foods thought of and eaten as snacks or drunk with them are so horribly and dreadfully fattening they should never be eaten or drunk by anyone wanting to avoid being quite fat.  And, it gets worse.  They are routinely so harmful we now know that no one who wants to stay healthy should do so either!

Some people often eat donuts or pastry for a morning snack. 

The refined grains and sugar or high fructose corn syrup in these helps cause those people to gain fat just from the added calories, be more likely to get type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and have blood sugar swings that mess around with their mood and cause excess insulin to be released which acts as a messenger telling their body to deposit all the calories as fat and not take out any even if extra energy is needed.

Then too -- almost all of them contain hydrogenated oils.  So they cause heart disease two ways in addition to making you fat because of and the sugars and refined grains and the hydrogenated oils.

It gets worse for those who drink coffee to which nondairy creamer – made out of hydrogenated oils – and sugar or artificial sweeteners are added. That adds to the blood sugar swings and excess insulin swings and the double heart disease boost and the boost in type 2 diabetes risks.

It gets even worse for those who drink colas or other soft drinks at their morning break.  Both regular and diet soft drinks are almost perfect fatteners. 

Regular soft drinks add a lot of calories without any effect on making you less hungry!  Then the rebound from the blood sugar spike a short time later makes you MORE hungry. 

Diet soft drinks are the perfect drug to make you fat!   They make things taste less sweet by comparison AND the effect of the insulin surge from the sugar surge your body expects but fails to get then makes you crave sugary foods.  Most of the time, people who drink soft drinks have sugary foods around and then eat extra of them when that happens.  Studies show that most people who drink diet soft drinks get  fatter and even tend to add the fat as belly fat.

What about afternoon and evening snacks?

Those tend to be store bought packaged desserts or salty snacks. 

The packaged store bought desserts are just like the donuts and pastries still too often eaten as a morning snack.  Read the label on one sometime at the store.  After the sugar or high fructose corn syrup and the refined grains and the salt and the hydrogenated oils, many have nothing else left! 

If you want to keep your health and either not get fat or stop being fat, after reading that, put it back on the shelf and never buy it again. It’s also wise to hardly ever eat it if you have the opportunity otherwise.

The packaged salty snacks usually don’t have sugar or high fructose corn syrup or have far less.  But in addition to the hydrogenated oils and refined grains, they contain excess salt which adds water weight and boosts your blood pressure.  In some people it boosts their blood pressure enough your doctor may put you on one of the high side effect blood pressure drugs to lower it.

Then it gets worse!  Most of them contain MSG although it’s sometimes hidden with a listed ingredient name like autolyzed yeast or natural spice or “spices.”  Oops!  People who ingest MSG routinely get fatter research has found.  And the more MSG they eat the fatter they tend to get.  Why is this so & why is it added?  MSG makes the food that it’s in more addictive so you eat more and are more likely to buy it again. 

(The chips eaten with fast food lunches and as snacks are exactly this kind of food.  So are most of the French fries and other similar foods served at fast food places.  You often don’t see labels. But the ingredients of refined grains and salt and MSG and poor quality oils or hydrogenated oils are much the same.)

It is true that better fast food places and restaurants serving such things now use canola oil or palm oil which is still extra calories and fattening but no where near as harmful to your health.)

Read the label on a packaged snack sometime at the store.  After the refined grains and the salt and the hydrogenated oils and the MSG, many have nothing else left! 

If you want to keep your health and either not get fat or stop being fat, after reading that, put it back on the shelf and never buy it again. . It’s also wise to hardly ever eat it if you have the opportunity otherwise.

What if you like some of these foods?

There are four cures.  Actually there are two but each one has two ways to do it.

Here’s two ways to simply not eat it or drink it:

Accept that you know you like it and have enjoyed it in the past.  But remind yourself of what it’s made out of and how much those things harm your health and fatten you. Then realize you now know better than to ever have any.  Now it’s the same food or drink but you have made an upgrade in your life and no longer think it safe or wise to eat or drink.

Or, let yourself have it but only once a month or once or twice a year. (I love root beer floats and I’ll have a double or triple sized one someday.  But it’s been two years now & I’ve not yet gotten to it though I did come close once.  I have a few times eaten double chocolate pieces of cake.  And on some family special occasions I’ve eaten some commercial desserts.)  What I have not done and will NOT do is to have these things more than once a day every week

Find things that you like that much but don’t have these dreadful things in them!  Some of those will be more OK in moderation and some are always OK.  Then when you want to reward yourself or celebrate or de-stress eat or drink those things instead.

Red wine, dark chocolate, and any kind of organic berries or other fruit you like can help.  Raw unsalted nuts also work.  I do all of the above.  I have one serving of fruit every day at breakfast because my body and yours can process the sugar best at breakfast.  I drink a glass or glass and half of red wine with dinner.  And, I eat four half bars of dark chocolate as a snack on separate days.

You do have to be careful of the amount per day or week of red wine and dark chocolate.  But the fruit has fiber and water and is more filling plus it has more health benefits. 

And for those who aren’t allergic and avoid just stuffing them down while watching TV, nuts are so filling between their health OK oils and their protein and fiber that in practice people who eat them tend to automatically eat enough less they gain no weight or fat when they eat nuts!

Besides nuts, other health OK or almost OK high protein foods also work as snacks.  (Protein turns off hunger and helps you keep or build muscle. Even better, you get no extra hunger rebound later like you do with refined grains, sugars, and artificial sweeteners.)

Boiled eggs, ideally from pastured or cage free chickens fit here.  (Where I live, just recently Whole Foods began stocking eggs from pastured chicken from two different companies.)

Small pieces of skinless cooked poultry also work.  Occasionally, small pieces of cheese or string cheese can work.  Plus you can now get cheese from cows fed only grass and not fed antibiotics.  Small pieces of that kind of cheese are even better.  They cost a bit more so you eat a bit less and they are much better for you.  A small container of pre-cooked, canned, Alaskan wild salmon also works.

Lastly, did you know there is a kind of snack that protects your health and makes you less fat almost automatically?  Find a few kinds you actually like and find some kinds you find at least edible you could eat with another food you like more.

These are nonstarchy vegetables and the raw cruciferous ones prevent cancer too.

So here are some snack combos with these:

A slice that’s an eighth of an 8 ounce block of Irish cheese from grass fed cows and a raw cauliflower floret and a few radishes.

A piece of skinless and cooked chicken breast and a small container with some tomato slices.

An ounce of raw walnuts plus an ounce of raw pecans plus a few raw broccoli florets.

A single string cheese and some celery sticks with guacamole.  (If you aren’t allergic, avocados have health OK monosaturated oil and so many kinds of nutrients and vitamins they are a super food even among super foods!  Plus you may, like me, like guacamole.)

Some nonfat cottage cheese and diced tomatoes in a container and a boiled egg and a few raw broccoli florets.

B.  How to snack without gaining fat and when NOT to!

Two things NOT to do are to eat a morning snack because you didn’t eat breakfast or to eat a snack when too little time has passed between meals.

One way people get sabotaged is they skip breakfast.  Then at work either directly when provided for free at work or at a vending machine at work they are so hungry they actually need something to eat. But what they have to choose from are only fattening and harmful choices.  Ouch!  Many people get fat from this one mistake alone.

So, do two things. 

Even if it itself is a fast snack, ALWAYS eat breakfast before you go to work.  Have some kind of protein food such as a boiled egg or a small glass of milk.  Then have something high fiber that has good nutrition too. I like a bit of cooked lentils and a piece of fruit or some organic wild blueberries.

Then when you consider a fattening mid-morning snack remember what almost all of the commercial ones are made out of and harm your health.  Then you will be able to pass on them in part because you are enough less hungry from eating breakfast.

Also, if you have more than four and half or 5 hours between meals, take a health OK and not fattening snack to have in between ahead of time.  In my case, I finish breakfast by 6:15 and eat about 11:45 each morning.  So I have my small snack at mid-morning.

My gap between my lunch and dinner is so much smaller I don’t get hungry for a snack and my lunch has enough protein and health OK fat and fiber I don’t need a snack or miss it.

But what if people in my office did have some kind of low fiber and fattening snack in mid-afternoon?  It’s light enough I could eat it and the rebound hunger would show up about at my dinner time.  Big problem though.  If I did that or for the people who do eat snacks in such short time periods between meals and eat fattening snacks, the results are dreadful.  Fat gain and worse health and future health then show up!

Third, the other time never to snack is when watching TV.  (Watching the SuperBowl has become a separate, special occasion when most people do.  So each year I do a post about health OK foods and snacks just before it.)

But the rest of the time people who snack while watching TV almost always get and stay fat.

Usually when people eat they eat what they planned to eat or until they are no longer hungry and then they stop.  They are mentally present and notice they are eating.  But when people are watching TV, they set out food and then go on automatic and mindlessly keep eating as they watch.  When the snacks are fattening too this is a recipe for fat gain and worse.

But there’s more bad news.  When you watch TV you burn less calories than when you are sleeping.  So when you add that much fattening from snacks from a lot of calories you don’t need it’s usually a disaster.  Most people who do this often are not just fat, they are very fat or “obese.” 

But worst of all, most of the ads on commercial, evening and weekend TV, are for the very soft drinks and packaged desserts and snacks to avoid if you want to avoid being fat.

C. So to have snacks help you lose fat and keep it off:

Always eat breakfast.  Eat health OK snacks that turn off hunger.  Usually you have to bring these from home.  And never eat the snacks that fatten you and make you sick eventually or worse.  And only eat snacks when it’s more than four and a half hours between meals. Then away from work avoid eating snacks while watching TV.

If you follow that advice you can lose fat you keep off while the people who do the reverse keep getting fatter and running up future medical bills!