Techniques and Tricks on How to be a Healthy Snacker

• Put away part your dinner (like the dessert) and eat that when you get that yearning for an after-dinner snack.
• Snack on foods which are difficult to really overeat (because they are not empty foods). If you crave something really sweet, eat dried fruit, like figs. There are a lot of calories, but there is also a lot of food value there, and you will gag before you eat too much. Refined sugar is so refined that it gives you no warning when you’ve consumed too much.
• Have the foods that you will snack on prepared in advance (vegetables cut up in plastic bags, wholesome cookies wrapped two to a packet, etc.), and try to snack at the same time every day.
• Always carry a supply of healthy food eating in between meals. That way if you are with friends and snacking is what’s on, you’ll be armed with some food value.
•  Try not to skimp on meals. If you eat well at meals, you won’t be as tempted to snack. (Six smaller meals a day would keep your blood sugar even and hunger at a minimum.) Eat slowly and think about what you are eating. Enjoy each bite.
• If you can’t resist eating ice cream or a chocolate-chip cookie, go ahead. But don’t go overboard. Sometimes, because of the constant pressure to diet, once you “break down” and eat one cookies, you feel like you’ve lose some kind of battle, and you go ahead and eat another ten. Two cookies or a bowl of ice cream every once in a while are not going to kill you.
• Take your own popcorn and healthier candy to the movies.
• Use the soda pop ideas in this book to replace both regular and sugar-free soft drinks. Studies have shown that Nutrasweet, the sweetener used in diet sodas, can affect brain chemistry. It has been responsible for headaches, rashes, dizziness and menstrual problems.

Eat “comfort foods” that fill you up, not out. The foods that make the most popular snacks are comforting in some way. They are usually high in carbohydrates. So go for complex carbohydrates, rather than the empty refined kind. Snack on whole wheat pasta, granola, muffins, popcorn, whole grain bread, granola bars, homemade chips, the ice creams and ice pops suggested in this book, fruits, and vegetables. These are high in fiber and will fill you up before they do too much damage. If you are going to go to fast food places, look for salad bars and Mexican food, like burritos and bean tacos.