5 tips for smart snacking on a diet - KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana News Weather & Sports

By Lisa Spodak ResultsNotTypical@worldnow.com
Provided by WorldNow

Week 88 Weigh In:

Change this week:  -2 lbs
Change overall:  -93

For the first time in what seems like a long time, I feel like I had a relatively normal week - mostly because I gave up on trying to "make up" for my gains in previous weeks.  Though I didn't go to the gym as much as I would have liked, I did make a good effort and I didn't let myself get too stressed about it.  And, voila!, I saw a modest and reasonable weight loss.

If all weeks could be like this, I'd be thrilled!

The one thing I kept coming back to this week was concentrating on how to make things easier on myself.

Some tips:

1) Don't keep temptations in the house!
I had a few unfortunate late-night binging episodes and one thing I decided was I wouldn't replace any of the foods I'd finished off until I got back on track and could handle having them around again. So, right now, I have no ice cream, Snackwell's cookies, black licorice or Reese's peanut butter cups in the apartment.

2) Organize thoughtfully
Make sure you keep the healthiest options handy and the more indulgent ones a little more inconvenient. For example, I have three shelves in my cupboard - the lowest shelf has my cereal, raisins and nuts; the second shelf has crackers, peanut butter and canned goods; the top shelf, out of my line of site and a little out of reach, has cookies, 100-calorie snacks and, um, more cookies.

3) Practice portion control
There are a few pre-packaged 100-calorie snacks I can't live without (Hershey's Pretzel Bars and Keebler Right Bites Mini Grasshopper cookies come to mind), but they can get a bit expensive. Pick a time when you're not hungry and portion out those big boxes of crackers or cookies into servings. Then when you want a snack, you can just grab a baggy instead of having to measure while in the throes of being hungry.

4) Make healthy options extra easy
When it comes to healthy snacks, it's all about the pre-planning and preparation. Bell peppers are a great snack, but they won't get eaten if I don't have them cleaned and cut up and ready to eat when the snack attack hits. So I try to set aside time when I get home from grocery shopping to make all my healthy snacks easy to grab-and-go. If I don't think I'll have time, I sometimes pay a little extra to buy them already prepared.

5) Out of sight means out of mind
It's great to package snacks into pre-measured servings, but it's even better to not get around to eating them at all! I find that if I keep my more indulgent snacks in my drawer instead of on my desk at work, I'm less likely to get around to eating them - because as soon as I see food, I suddenly become "hungry." Of course, I leave the clementines and grapes and carrots out in full sight!