I use to swear by 100 calorie snacks but now I have a slightly different out look on them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that they are awful, but if you are a person that loves to snack a lot and end up eating 5 or 6 of those snacks a day you’ve pretty much had the amount of calories you should have for an actual meal! Think about it, if you are trying to lose or maintain your weight and your max daily calorie intake is 1700 calories a day, but you eat 5 or 6 100 calorie snacks a day, you are only leaving yourself with 1100-1200 calories for 3 meals. That averages to 367-400 calories per meal. You should get the majority of your calories during breakfast (most important meal of the day…hmmmm think I will blog about that!). You should actually have 6 small meals a day but I wouldn’t suggest substituting three of those meals (maybe 1) with 100 calorie snacks.
Just to clarify…calorie snacks I mean the candy, cookies and chip type snacks you find in your local grocery store, they come in a box with 5-8 packages and can be found in the snack/cookie/chip aisle. There are some 100 calorie snacks that are not that bad, but really, are they more nutritious than the foods we know are healthier? I suggest to opt for something more nutritious like fruit, 1-2 graham crackers with peanut butter, 15 almonds or cashews, 1 cheese stick with a couple of salt free saltine crackers, carrots, celery with laughing cow spread, healthy dry cereal (like Cheerios, Fiber One, Special K), etc… I eat 100 calorie snacks occasionally, but I’m not big on snacking. I use to rely on them when I started my weight loss BUT, once again I don’t snack a lot. So by all means, have a 100 calorie snack in moderation if you desire candy, chips or cookies but not 5-6 of them a day!
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