You woke up and started the day with the best breakfast you knew that would hit a home run on the healthy foods scale. You followed up your home run breakfast with a nutrient dense salad, that is nothing short of a grand slam, but now you find yourself a bit hungry before it is time to roll out dinner.
Too many times, snacks can be our downfall. Whether it is you telling yourself you will have just one or getting tricked by protein bars or all natural snacks or juices seeming healthy through marketing but yet they are packed with sugar or who knows what else. However, on the flip side, sometimes you need a bit more than some celery sticks to munch on.
Instead of getting tricked my a marketing label or your brain, here are 5 tips in ways you can prep your snack drawer at work from items in the grocery store to keep you on track AND your hunger at bay until dinner time.
Look for snacks with short label ingredients.
If your snack nutrition label is more than eight ingredients than put it right back on the shelf. Healthy food shouldn’t be complicated. You should be able to understand each ingredient and the ingredient list should be short. Becoming a more educated label-reader is the easiest way to ID ingredients you want to avoid in excess.
When in doubt, shop in the produce section.
When you are uncertain of a product of their ingredients, more times than not you should just turn it down. It you find yourself frustrated by ingredient lists, then your best bet is to stick to whole foods. Whole foods can be most likely found in the produce section–think fruits and veggies. If you are seeing a sticker on an apple that reeds gluten-free then you should really start shopping somewhere else.
Keep the sugar low.
Sugar is a huge culprit in what makes someone fat. It isn’t fat and it isn’t specifically all carbs, it is sugar. Make sure you check labels and keep your sugar intake in check. Additionally, opting for less sweet stuff is an efficient way to make sure you’re getting all the bang for your buck when it comes to calories. Sugar does not keep you full–for very long.
When in doubt, probiotic products are a win.
From kombucha to probiotic supplements, there are plenty of ways to get your daily dose of good bacteria to tap into its digestion-optimizing. Plus, a lot of products with probiotics are filling enough to get you over the mid-afternoon hunger.
Lean towards protein.
Our go-to snacks around here are snacks with high amounts of protein. Sugar metabolizes too quickly, as previously discussed, but protein and maybe a side of fat are your best options when it comes to getting over the hump before dinner time.
How does this list measure up? What are you go-to healthy afternoon snacks?
