Snack like a boss

 If you've messed up your healthy lifestyle lately, here is something to make yourself feel better-- everyone does at some point. But that doesn't mean that it's over for you and you failed! Last week was a bad week for me. I feeling a bit depressed and sick due to some bad news. It was hard for me to get up off the couch, so I did zero running. And even though I know that my body needs nutrition even more when I'm feeling crappy, I didn't give it that. In fact, I think for the first half of the week I didn't eat anything. And the second half, when I actually felt like eating, it was cookies I wanted. Not a great week. But we get back up on that health-horse and keep going! You have to know that even the healthiest of us are going to have bad days/weeks. So when we mess up, we acknowledge we did and make the next week ten times better! No pouting allowed, that just makes you feel more depressed and then you want to eat more cookies (take it from someone who knows). And interestingly enough, I am craving vegetables like crazy right now! My body is so not used to 3 straight days of cookie eating and I think it is just crying out for something green and beautiful.

Speaking of green and beautiful, let's talk about healthy snacks. We all know that every human being needs to snack, especially between those long hours between lunch and dinner. If you deny your hungry body food for that long, you feel like a shark in a feeding frenzy by the time dinner is served. You will overeat and be stuffed, instead of feeling satisfied with a good meal. So if you think that snacking is bad for you, to NOT snack can be worse! On the flip side, if you are snacking on... let's say... cookies for example, you're not doing your body any favors. So the key to snacking is putting the right food in your body to satisfy it.

My rule for snacking is mostly this- choose the produce before anything else. Now everybody is a little different, but the average person needs 2-3 servings of fruit per day and 2-3 servings of vegetables per day. I know that seems like a lot, but I'll show you what I do and you'll be amazed at how easy it is to incorporate that much produce into your diet!

The picture above represents a typical grocery shopping trip for me and I do it about 3-4 times a week. So if you've read my meal blog, you know that you should be eating fruit with your breakfast meal and vegetables with lunch and dinner meals. Ok, so that's 1 fruit and 2 vegetable servings out of the way! Mid-morning I have another serving of fruit for my snack. Mid-afternoon I have another serving of vegetables for a snack. And then before bed, I have another serving of fruit before bed (usually with yogurt). That's 3 fruit and 3 vegetable servings in less than 24 hours! You can dooooooooo it! If you're a bullet-point person, I put the schedule down below.

- 7 am: Breakfast (w/ fruit serving)
- 10 am: Snack (fruit)
-12:30 pm: Lunch (w/ veggie serving)
- 2 pm: Snack (veggie)
-4 pm: Another snack (can be produce or something else healthy)
-6 pm: Dinner (w/ veggie serving)
-8 pm: Bedtime snack (fruit)

Obviously, I switch up the schedule based on how that day goes for me. Sometimes I really want something avocado-y for a bedtime snack. Sometimes I want an apple mid-day. But you get the point- make your snacks about produce and you'll get in your daily servings of fruits and veggies. You'll notice that in the schedule at about 4 pm, there is a scheduled time for another snack. I usually need about two snacks in the afternoon, because that stretch to dinner is so freakin' long some days. So this extra snack doesn't need to be produce (though it usually is), but it should be healthy and somewhat unprocessed. Sometimes it's a yogurt with a bit of granola. Other times it's a few crackers with cheese. Don't eat the cookies here (sorry for all the cookie references, it's just fresh on my mind right now) and don't break out the ice cream. Keep it simple, keep it healthy. Chances are, if you think it's unhealthy, don't eat it. If you think it is healthy, go for it.

Oh my servings. When I was studying nutrition, I remember looking at all my textbooks and them saying things like "1/3 cup of fruit juice is a serving of fruit", but only "1/4 cup dried fruit is a serving". Oh my heck, why do people in the health industry think eating needs to be so complicated? It was ridiculous. So, once again, I went for simplification. 1 cup of fruit or vegetable is one serving. And this means that if you're eating a fruit/veggie that is the size of small apple, that's a whole serving by itself. See, not too bad.

I prefer not to use fruit and veggie juices as my servings, because they have so many added ingredients to them. Also juices are less likely to fill you than the actual fruit it represents. Juices really ruin produce for me. When it comes to your eating, fresh is always always always better (that's not just my opinion, it's science). And don't forget that water is a filler! So if you're already munching quite a bit, supplement water for the snack.

I have so much more to tell you guys, but this post is already quite long! I have a few snack ideas and recipes that I will share with you next time.

Boring scientific note: So here's the really cool thing about produce- they are so PACKED full of vitamins and minerals that your body spends more energy using those vitamins to break down other foods. For example, a couple of the B vitamins are a necessity for metabolism. You see, all food gets broken down into glucose and then that glucose must be somehow turned into energy. The way this usually works is that the glucose molecule kind-of gets bumped and kicked around by other molecules until it's molecular shape has completely changed. While it's getting beat up by these other molecules, the glucose is emitting ATP, and if you remember high school biology, ATP is what the body uses for energy. And some of the molecules in charge of kicking around glucose are the B vitamins! Without these vitamins, metabolism cannot be completed. It's like an assembly line. If you are making a car, you put it on the assembly line and everybody is in charge of adding something to the car. If the person in charge of adding an engine to the car isn't there, the car-making cannot continue. Same with metabolism. Each molecule on the assembly line is in charge of changing the glucose into ATP in some special way. And if the B vitamins aren't there to do their job, the metabolism process CANNOT go forward and you will not get ATP (energy) in the end. It's a really complicated process and I tried to explain it the best I know how. But I did score a 97% on my biochemistry final, so just trust that I know what I'm talking about.