• Hello, and welcome back to Fresh Focus! Today we are going to discuss some good, initial steps to take in order to avoid excess snacking.
• And I’ll start by saying this… I don’t like snacks.
• Do I have your attention? Perfect. Let me re-phrase. I don’t like the concept of snacking. Let’s dig into this a bit.
• Snacks, although enjoyable and sometimes appropriate, can often be more of a hindrance than a help. This is especially true when you think about what people typically snack on. Items such as chips, chocolate, candy, candy bars, snack cakes, gummy bears, etc. Items that are low in nutritional value, provide little satiety and fullness, and are typically very energy dense, meaning they contribute large amounts of calories. These foods also fall into the category of hyperpalatable foods, meaning that it’s easy to overeat them because they are activating that reward system in the brain in a way that food is really not meant to. In other words, we take that daily caloric budget and head straight to the casino. (CASINO SOUNDS). But guess what, you still have to pay the bills. Your body still needs nutrients and satiety, and you’re still going to have to eat some meals in order to achieve this. Except now, you are over budget. You’ve consumed excess calories, and physics dictates that the extra energy has to be stored as fat for later use. Granted, not all snacks consist of such low quality foods, but we have to be realistic when approaching this topic. And ANY snacks eaten in excess can be problematic, healthy or not. So even if they are good quality, whole foods, they can still be a crutch. “A crutch for what?”- you might ask.
• Well, first, it’s important to note that this can become a very lengthy, complex topic. Snacking can have multiple causes and contributors, such as various triggers and cues, emotional eating, boredom, poor sleep, high stress, etc. And these are all important, individual factors that you should discuss with your dietitian, provider and behavioral health provider if necessary.
• But today, I want to primarily focus on a couple of the initial things that I like to evaluate when helping someone when they have questions regarding if they need to add more snacks to help them reach their health goals.
• One of the first questions I like to ask, is whether the snacking is due to actual, physiological hunger, or some other reason. This will help guide the conversation in a way that will best benefit the person, later on. Regardless of the answer, however, my next step is typically the same, and that is to evaluate the thing I mentioned earlier that snacking is often a crutch for. So what is it?
• Meal structure. Better yet, poor meal structure.
• This can be any number of problems including, but not limited to, meal frequency, distribution, quality, quantity, balance, etc.
• If you remember all the way back to series 1, we discuss some important, foundational topics when it comes to nutrition. And we want to reflect on these because nutritional quality is always going to be one of the most important aspects of anything we do with our intake, so let’s refresh on a couple of these.
• First, we want to try and eat more real food, coming as straight from the plant or animal as possible, and try to consume less heavily processed food. This includes protein sources, non-starchy vegetables, and our whole food sources of carbohydrates.
• Second, we want to try to have good balance on the plate. With this, we can use the healthy plate method from that series, which consists of roughly a quarter plate protein, half plate NS vegetables, and the last quarter plate is our carbohydrate source. I say roughly, just because these portions may change slightly depending on someone’s goals, disease states, protein needs, as well as many other variables, but for most people the standard healthy plate will be an appropriate target.
• Now we need to take these two topics and apply them to our meal layout.
• Ideally, it’s helpful if we keep the caloric content of each meal fairly similar, and avoid the dramatic calorie roller-coaster. For example, if someone needs to consume 2400 calories per day, and they eat 3 meals per day, that would mean that they are trying to keep each meal around 800 calories. Does this have to be exact? No, absolutely not, but it’s helpful to be in the ballpark. Say within a couple hundred calories either direction. Why is this. Sometimes, when the quantity of our meals is so highly variable, it can be hard to maintain consistent satiety throughout the day. This can potentially lead to overeating at certain meals, and/or unnecessary snacking. It’s very commonplace for people to eat very little at breakfast and lunch, for the sake of reducing calories, but then comes supper… This often them up for eating much more than they anticipated or even realize. The same often happens when we skip meals. If you are going to have breakfast, for example, make it something substantial. Just grabbing a piece of fruit, or toast, may not be the best plan. Get some protein. Get some nutrients. Get some fiber. And most importantly, get some satiety – some satisfaction.
• This leads directly into the question, “how many meals per day should we eat?” Personally, I am fine with anything between two and five. Pretty big range, right? That’s because our meal frequency is much less important than the basics of real food, balance, and consistency. One meal typically isn’t enough of a chance to get all gears in the machine so to speak that we need from our food, and there’s not really documented benefit of consuming more than five. We will go more in depth with this topic another time.
• The time of where those meals land is also a topic of flexibility and personal preference. For some, the classic breakfast/ lunch/ supper setup is just not ideal. That’s ok. Maybe intermittent fasting works better for someone, so that they have 2 solid meals at 2pm and 8pm. Maybe someone prefers four meals with their eating times at 7am, 11am, 4pm, and 8pm. Maybe someone DOES prefer the standard breakfast/ lunch/ supper setup. These are all ok!
• The main thing I’d like people to take away from this, is that we need to choose the meal quantity and timing that works for us, and our lifestyle, not what is recommend or pushed on us by social media nutrition “gurus,” TV personalities, or other questionable sources. Two to five is a good, general, rule-of-thumb, and then you can place those throughout your day as needed.
• I also want to touch on some of the typical recommendations that get thrown around when it comes to reducing our snacking. Things such as drinking more water or tea, keeping snacks out of the home, chewing gum, getting active, playing a game, brushing your teeth, etc. Some of these can help. It’s typically a good idea to get more fluids in, and keeping some processed snack foods out of the house won’t hurt either. What we want to be careful with, is that if we find ourselves consistently reaching for solutions like these to reduce our snacking, then we haven’t fixed the problem. These things can be great if they are only needed on occasion, but they can quickly become a band-aid to just mask the true issue. I highly recommend we ask ourselves the two questions mentioned previously: Is it actual hunger, and do we have our meals structured in an appropriate way that works for us?
• Other questions to ask might be: Is our total intake too low, or calories set too low? Are we under more stress than usual? Are we lacking sleep? Have we strayed towards more hyperpalatable, processed foods that are easy to overeat, and don’t provide as much fullness? Are there other substances present in this equation, such as alcohol or cannabis? Legal or not, substances can absolutely effect our intake, and we want to be mindful of that as well.
• And remember, it’s not about banning foods, or eating perfectly. It’s about optimizing your intake, and improving your relationship with food. Sometimes we do things that aren’t quite working in our favor. Sometimes we have bad habits. There’s no shame in that. We all have things to improve. If we can be objective, and mindful, and have the knowledge to know what to look for as well as how to improve, we can make some great changes. And we’ll thank ourselves for that later on.
• As always, if you have questions, or need some specific help for your situation, please reach out to your local VA nutrition department.
• Thank you for listening to Fresh Focus. Be sure to leave a review, subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, and stay tuned for future episodes!