Healthy Snacking: Natural Weight Loss And Boost Your Metabolism

Healthy Snacking: Natural Weight Loss. Many people mistakenly think it's a "bad habit" to eat between meals. Actually, studies show that people who eat healthy snacks between meals have more control over their eating and have an easier time with natural weight loss or maintaining their weight.

The key word in that phrase is “healthy.” The value of having a healthy, balanced snack between meals is two-fold:

First, it helps to boost your metabolism for greater fat burning.

When you go for more than a few hours without eating, your metabolism temporarily lowers and you conserve calories rather than burning them. It's part of your body's primitive survival mechanism to prevent starvation. Think of healthy snacking as adding fuel to a fire; without the proper amount of fuel, the fire won’t burn.

Second, eating regular, healthy snacks helps prevent hunger and cravings that can set you up for overeating.

When you have a healthy, balanced snack, you are less likely to overeat at mealtimes and later in the evening, therefore overtime you will experience natural weight loss. You are also less likely to "give in" to temptation when faced with foods you know you shouldn’t eat.

The benefits of snacking include:

• Higher metabolism (meaning you burn calories faster and experience natural weght loss)
• Reduced tendency to overeat at meals
• Improved digestion (the smaller the amount of food, the easier it is to digest)
• Reduced hunger – snack as often as you feel hungry
• Smaller meal sizes cause your stomach to start shrinking

Again, the important point here is snack quality. Many people grab a bag of chips, cookies, granola bar, pretzels, apple, and candy bars when they are hungry and are looking for something that is quick and convenient. These kinds of snacks are high in simple carbs and will cause a sharp increase in your insulin levels, which signals your body to store excess carbs as fat.

High insulin can also cause too much glucose to be removed from your bloodstream, which can cause your blood sugar levels to drop, which makes your brain sends you hunger signals to get you to eat more. Snacks that make you hungry after an hour are self-defeating for weight loss.

This is why is it preferable to eat snacks that are a balance of good fats, proteins, and fiber and low in carbohydrates.

Our definition of a snack is a mini-meal that uses whole foods, is nutrient-dense, and is filling such as a bowl of vegetable and bean soup or a plate of raw vegetables and hummus.

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