Here's A List Of
Healthy Snacks For You!

These healthy nutritious snack foods
are also quick and easy to prepare!

Here's a list of healthy snacks which will make it easier for you to have your 5 or 6 small meals a day and therefore achieve your weight-loss goal faster! These healthy snack ideas are also quick and easy to prepare.

Having quick and easy healthy snack recipes is so important when it comes to achieving your weight-loss goal because many people find it difficult to plan, prepare and consume 5 or 6 small meals a day, which is so important for weight loss. This is understandable considering how busy most people are with their work, family and various other commitments.

Despite this, there are some quick and easy healthy snack recipes that you should consider having for your mid-morning and/ or mid-afternoon meals. These will make having your 5 or 6 small meals a day a breeze!

Before we consider the list of healthy snacks though, here are some general nutrition recommendations:

Always have 'whole foods' for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Ensure you have some protein with each of your meals

Control your portion sizes

Reduce your intake of high-density carbohydrates (bread, pasta, rice and cereals) without cutting them out altogether

Increase your intake of the fibrous vegetables (low-density carbohydrates)

Drink plenty of water

Have normal, 'everyday' foods

Always have 'whole foods'
for breakfast, lunch and dinner

It is important to eat as many of your daily meals as possible and that is why most of the options in the list of healthy snacks are 'whole foods'. However, with the time limitations most people have it is often easier to have a couple of your meals as shakes rather than as whole foods.

If this is the case for you, then perhaps you may want to consider having a protein shake or meal replacement shake for your mid-morning or mid-afternoon meals/ snacks.

I don't recommend having protein shakes or meal replacement shakes for your main meals simply because I don't believe it is a long-term, sustainable approach to good nutrition.

However, in saying that, I have had some clients in the past that have trouble 'eating breakfast' because they have been out of the habit of eating breakfast for many years. Therefore, in those cases I do suggest having a shake for breakfast but then making sure that the mid-morning meal is definitely a 'whole-food' meal/ snack.

It is so important to eat food rather than have too many shakes simply because the process of digestion requires the body to expend energy, which helps to boost the metabolism and assist weight loss.

Shakes are in a pre-digested form and require far less digestion by the body.

Ensure you have some protein
with each of your meals

Protein provides the 'building blocks' of the body (amino acids) and since the body is a dynamic structure (it is constantly building up and breaking down tissues), it makes sense to supply our body with protein every 2-3 hours throughout the day.

It doesn't have to be much; 10-30 grams every 2-3 hours is plenty for virtually everyone.

To determine how much 10-30 grams of protein is, read the 'Macronutrient Information Table' in Look Good, Feel Great!

This will provide you with all the information you need.

The fact is that most people don't have protein in their mid-morning and/ or mid-afternoon snacks. They will tend to have a piece of fruit, a tub of yoghurt or a coffee for these meals. That is if they have them at all!

Therefore, I have ensured that protein is included in all options in the list of healthy snacks.

The biggest problem with skipping these meals or not having protein in them is that the body will go into a catabolic state or a negative nitrogen balance if it goes without protein for greater than 2 or 3 hours during the day.

As a result, make sure that all of your healthy snack recipes contain some protein and good fat.

Control your portion sizes

It is simply common sense that all of your healthy snack recipes have controlled portion sizes. Unfortunately though, what is common sense is often not common practice!

Too many people eat far too much food throughout the day. Of course, the larger your meal, the greater the insulin response and therefore, the greater the likelihood of the food being converted into body fat as well as the body not being able to access and use fat as a fuel source.

The list of healthy snacks provides you with approximate portion sizes. You can obviously adjust them according to your appetite. Just make sure that you keep the proportion of foods the same.

Reduce your intake of high-density carbohydrates
(bread, pasta, rice and cereals) without cutting them out altogether

These foods are the most likely to cause fluctuations in your blood sugar level, which will make it difficult to keep insulin low and therefore lose weight. This isn't to say that you need to cut these foods out of your diet altogether; you simply need to be aware of how often you have these foods and how much you have. As a result, they aren't included very much in the list of healthy snacks.

Ideally, if you want to achieve maximum weight loss, then you need to limit your intake of these foods to once or twice a day. This means you can still include them in your healthy snack recipes but you must remain conscious of your intake of them.

Previous nutritional recommendations to consume 6-11 serves of them a day are completely wrong! To find out more about this major nutritional error and why it is still around today, read the article titled, USDA Food Pyramid History.

Increase your intake of the fibrous vegetables (low-density carbohydrates)

These are sources of carbohydrates are by far and away the best to have if your goal it to maximise weight loss. They are great sources of fibre, have very few calories (kilojoules), provide vitamins and minerals and very little impact on your blood sugar level. They should always be included in your list of healthy snacks.

To get a comprehensive list of these low-density carbohydrates, get a copy of my e-book, Look Good, Feel Great!

Drink plenty of water

Everyone knows that you should drink plenty of water and that it can assist your weight-loss efforts. To find out more about this principle, click here.

Have normal, 'everyday' foods

It is so important that your list of healthy snacks uses normal, everyday foods. This will make it so much easier to ensure you have your 5 or 6 small meals every day for the rest of your life!

All of the nutritional principles you select must become long-term, sustainable lifestyle options. They aren't simply something you can do for a period of time, lose weight and then go back to previous eating habits. In order to keep the weight off you have to use the principles forever!

Okay, so here is the list of healthy snacks that you can have for your mid-morning and mid-afternoon meals:

1 small tin of plain tuna on 2 corn thins

1 apple and 12 almonds

100g low-fat yoghurt mixed with 2 tablespoons of cottage cheese (it really doesn't taste that bad!)

1 Protein Shake made with 100mls of low-fat milk and 100-200mls of water

1 banana and 8 cashew nuts

1/2 punnet of strawberries and 15 pistachio nuts

1 tin of flavoured tuna

1 tin of flavoured chicken breast

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