Snack Attack: 5 Tips for Choosing Wisely

One of the biggest challenges we face when changing our food behavior is controlling snack habits. The phrase “healthy snack” poses a multitude of challenges and can be incredibly misleading. Following these tips will help you get your nibble fix without destroying your calorie count and nutrition efforts.

1. Portion control: With the exception of crudités (that’s fancypants for cut up, raw veggies), “healthy snack” doesn’t mean you can eat as much as you want. This applies to fruit, nuts, trail mix, and other options. Be mindful of the serving size. Most foods come equipped with a serving size on the label. For fresh fruits, it’s easy to look up a serving size. With fruits such as apples, oranges, plums, or peaches, one piece is typically one serving. Other items, such as berries, should be measured or counted out.  One of my favorite resources for nutritional data is http://nutritiondata.self.com/. Not only does it give you calorie and nutritional data on foods, but it allows you to compare amounts to make a decision on how much you’d like to eat. Grazing on a great big bowl of nuts, grapes, or berries is a sure-fire way to tack on too many calories.
2. Read the label: Fresh fruits and vegetables, and plain, raw nuts are pretty straightforward when it comes to what they are made of. But packaged snacks can be misleading. It’s important to not only examine nutritional information, but ingredients. A good rule of thumb: if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. Even items that claim to be “all natural” can have odd ingredients, chemicals, and other additives that you don’t want. Sticking with basic, original-form foods is your best bet.
3. Check your watch: Is it the 3 o’clock slump? The post-dinner munchies? Boredom nibbling? The time of day can help you choose the type of snack you want—or choose to not snack at all. The mid-afternoon snack should be something that will boost your energy (without a crash later). A handful of trail mix is a great way to boost your energy and your brain, and will be a great source of fuel for your after-work gym session. Evening and boredom snacking can be tricky, so this is the best time to reach for those fresh veggies or for nothing at all. Eating too close to bedtime can interrupt your sleep. Boredom snacking can lead to binging and packing on too many unwanted pounds. Drinking tea or water can help you determine if you’re really hungry, or just looking for something to do. If it’s been too many hours since you’ve eaten, you’re likely hungry for real.
4. Meal-planning: Snacking should be a part of your overall food plan every day. Just as you should be planning breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you should be including your snacks and using your other food choices for the day to weigh your options. If you’re a little light on the greens for the day, use snack times as a way to get more veggies in. Skimping on the protein? Choose your almonds or cheese. Snacks need to be part of your balanced eating habits.
5. Stay hydrated: Thirst is very often confused with hunger, so be sure to stay hydrated. This healthy habit can prevent you from over-snacking. Making sure you get at least 64 oz. of water a day is a must! You can also snack on foods with a high water content, such as cucumbers, tomatoes, or green peppers. They’re refreshing and low in calories.

Snack happy, snack healthy! 

Workout on the Go: Deck of Cards

If there’s one thing that nearly everyone brings on a family vacation or a weekend getaway, it’s a deck of cards. Now you can add a fun, simple workout to the games you play, and you don’t need to skip out on your fitness routines.

The game is simple: Choose an exercise for each suit. The number on the card determines the number of reps. Jacks, queens, kings, and aces are worth 11, 12, 13, and 14, respectively.  Jokers are wild, so you can do whatever you like with them. The goal: finish the deck!

Here’s a sample workout that uses no equipment: 

HEARTS:  body weight squats

DIAMONDS:  pushups

SPADES:  crunches

CLUBS: jumping jacks

JOKERS: 30-60 second planks

Accountability: The Jawbone® UP24

Accountability is a key component to successful life change. Some people choose a personal trainer or a life coach; others choose support groups, blogging, or other peer-supported environments. And some choose to simply hold themselves accountable, which can be the most difficult choice of all. Fortunately, there are many tools out there to help keep you accountable.

I have been using the Jawbone® UP24 for about three weeks now, and overall, I think it’s very effective. The UP24 app syncs right to my phone (which is Android, but it works with iPhone also), and I have everything in one place. That’s my favorite aspect of this device: one-stop shopping.

The device tracks three things: steps/activity, sleep, and food. It has its own tools for these categories, but syncs with many other popular apps, so if you’re already using one, it’ll simply sync up and you won’t have to do much. Setting it up is incredibly easy, as is charging and updating the software. It comes with a special USB device to connect to your computer, but communicates with your phone via Bluetooth.

The steps/activity tracker is very useful, and fun if you’re a competitive type. You set a step goal, and it’ll track all your steps, tell you the percentage you’ve completed, and even encourage you to up your goal if you consistently meet it. You can also set a stopwatch during exercise, and simply tell it the type of workout you did and the intensity level, and it’ll calculate your calories burned. It also tells you your resting burn, active burn, and then total burn for the day. You can also set timers to make the device vibrate, reminding you to get up and move around.

The sleep tracker is a real eye-opener (pun very much intended). Sleep is an integral part of living healthy, and so many of us sacrifice too much of it. When you can see the impact your sleep is having on your goals, it can be motivating to get into bed a bit earlier. It tracks the total percentage of your sleep goal, your deep and light sleep, how many times you wake up, and how long you’re awake.

The built-in food tracker is my least favorite. I do like that it gives you a “food score,” which is a score (out of 10) on the healthfulness of your food choices, but the actual food logging tool is not only hard to navigate, but it’s incredibly inaccurate on nutrition data. The good news is that it syncs with MyFitnessPal, which is a far better, far more comprehensive food tracker. UP24 also recently added a weight goal aspect to the food tracker, so you can set caloric intake. While it’s a bit disappointing to have to use an outside app for the most important component of healthy living, it’s not so inconvenient as to be a deterrent.

UP24 also gives you fun little tips, motivational messages, and even cautionary words every day based on your progress. Today it told me to be mindful of my 4.8/10 food score (in my defense, I’m on vacation), and to keep tracking to make improvements. It encouraged me to surround myself with healthy friends to increase my chances of staying healthy, and it challenged me to take 12,009 steps today to beat my 7-day average.

With the exception of a few minor annoyances, this was a worthy purchase. If Jawbone can clean up the food tracker database and make it more accurate, it’d be near-perfect. You can even sync it with your social media accounts to share your information with your friends and family. It’s versatile, inconspicuous (just looks like a cool bracelet), and user-friendly.

Happy tracking!