Control Your Snack Binges

When you're dieting, you might experience the feeling that comes over you to just grab a huge bag of potato chips and polish it off while watching your favorite sit-com. There are things you can do to help yourself avoid the ugly urge to snack uncontrollably.

1. Eat regularly and at least five meals per day. Next to breakfast, lunch and dinner you should have a healthy snack in the mornings and afternoons. Do not skip meals or planned snacks. Skipping nutritious foods will make you feel uncontrollably hungry.
2. If you can, avoid purchasing any unhealthy snacks. There are so many "good-for-you" snacks on the market today, there is really no reason why you should have a cupboard full of chocolate bars and cheesecurls. Start learning to read the back of the packages of foods, look at the fat content and the calories. If it says that the fat content is over 5% per serving, look for a different snack.
3. Here's a list of healthy snacks that are low in fat content, but still high in satisfaction:
   • pretzels (watch the sodium content)
   • low fat crackers
   • popcorn without butter
   • a cup of yoghurt
   • fruit salad
   • a stick of sugar-free chewing gum
   • a couple pieces of licorice
   • a cup of raw veggies with non-fat dip
4. Enjoy your snack like a real meal. Don't gobble it in between two phone calls you have to make, take your time.
5. Instead of a snack, have a drink. Try a non-caffeinated herbal tea with a spoonful of honey or water. Before you go for a snack - drink 8 oz. of your favorite non sweetened drink, then decide if you really need a snack.
6. Take up something you can do with your hands - crochet, knitting, puzzles, cross-stitch, sewing, playing piano, paint your nails and toenails, weed the garden, do a little housework, look at a magazine for the fashions you will buy when you're thinner. In other words, get your mind off food and onto a healthy hobby.
7. Watching something on television encourages snacking - you're sitting there, you feel like you should be doing something - so you go for the snack. Also, most of the commercials are about food. Stay away from TV, take up reading or another activity.
8. When you're finished with a meal or a planned snack, brush and floss your teeth - this will help you stay away from food for about an hour.
9. Take about one minute to think about what you are doing. Go look at yourself in the mirror during this minute. Ask yourself, "Do I really want to eat this and pay the consequence?"