The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies - Meri Raffetto [124]
Wanting to keep junk food out for the kids: Although the occasional treat is nice, leaving junk food such as chips and cookies on your countertop is a big trap. It's so easy to grab a cookie here and a few chips there. Before you know it, that mindless grazing has added up to a whole day's worth of calories. Keep your countertops clear of junk food and put out a bowl of fruit instead. You'll be amazed how your family will eat better choices when that's all you give them, and you won't be tempted by "just a bite" here and there.
The problem with waiting too long to eat
Waiting too long to eat a meal or a snack is the exact opposite behavior of mindless grazing (see the preceding section). Going five to seven hours without eating anything can negatively affect your metabolism (the rate at which your body burns calories). As you discover in Chapter 8, your body recognizes when it's out of fresh sources for energy (read: meals and snacks), so it begins to slow down the rate at which it uses calories to compensate for this lack of energy — that's the exact opposite of what you want to happen for weight loss!
When you wait too long to eat, you typically wind up eating way too much whenever you do finally sit down to a meal. What's wrong with that? Well, you're consuming more calories on a slower i>metabolism. If that scenario is the norm for you, losing weight is going to be pretty difficult.
The point of all this is simple: You really do need to eat to lose weight. Planning out your meals and snacks (and taking the time to eat what you planned) are steps on the road to weight-loss success.
Planning Out Healthy Snacks: A Top Weight-Loss Strategy
Planning out healthy snacks is a solution to mindless grazing and waiting too long to eat. You may read this advice as a simple suggestion you've seen before, but it's a very important strategy and means the difference between staying stuck at a weight you don't like and seeing the results you're looking for.
Carefully choosing your snacks will help you stick with your low-glycemic plan and save you hundreds of calories.
Wondering how to go about picking healthy, low-glycemic snacks? Start by thinking about your average busy, stressful workday. You know you'll be working late, and although you're able to grab some lunch and dinner at the local takeout restaurant, you haven't planned any of your snacks for the day. Your boss keeps a bowl of Peanut M&M's on the counter, and there's a vending machine down the hallway. Throughout the day you pick on the M&M's, grab a large latte from the coffee stand, and munch on a small bag of potato chips from the vending machine.
That doesn't sound like much for an eight- to ten-hour day, but you've actually just consumed 948 calories in snacks. Not only that, but the potato chips are higher-glycemic, leaving you with a blood sugar spike and stimulating your appetite for more food. And thanks to the restaurant takeout, you're looking at substantially more calories for your entire day.
Are you eating too much at snack time?
Eating too much during snack time can cause you to consume excess calories throughout the day, but how do you know how much to eat? Other than portion sizes, the most important tool at your disposal is your body's fullness and hunger cues. (Believe it or not, your body has other levels than just really hungry and really full.)
As an experiment, wait about three to four hours after a meal and write down what your hunger level is at that time. Are you extremely hungry (1), moderately hungry (2 to 4), or neutral (5)? Eat a small snack, wait for about 20 minutes, and record how full you feel at that time. Are you still hungry? Are you feeling neutral or perhaps slightly full? Getting used to these different levels of hunger and fullness is a great weight-loss strategy that can help you control calories in an effective way.
Think about your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "starving," 5 being neutral,