Week 12 brings an in-depth look at eating between meals. You’ll learn when to snack, what to snack on, and how to avoid inappropriate snacking by conquering your cravings and distracting yourself when necessary.
For most adults, even those with diabetes, snacks are optional. Research studies do not support the notion that eating frequently will help you lose weight or control your blood glucose any better than eating just breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In fact, some research suggests that men have better appetite control when they eat three larger meals per day compared with six smaller meals per day. (The research study didn’t involve women.) For many people, snacking just means more calories overall. You should snack if you are hungry, to avoid becoming overly hungry later, to find an opportunity to eat important food groups that you’d miss otherwise, and possibly to avoid hypoglycemia. (If you have frequent hypoglycemia, you should talk to your doctor about changing your medications. You might need less medication or a different medication, especially if you’ve lost weight or are now exercising more.)
If snacks are right for you, be prepared with several smart snacking solutions. Generally, snacks should be about 100–200 calories and low in saturated fat (definitely not more than 3 grams per serving, but the lower the better). The appropriate amount of carbohydrate in your snack depends on your blood glucose, activity level, and your meal plan. To learn how a particular snack affects your blood glucose, measure your blood glucose right before you eat and about two hours later. See Week 7 for more discussion about snacks, and, as always, talk to a registered dietitian to get a meal plan individualized for you.
Here are a few hunger-stopping options with limited carbohydrate for those times when your blood glucose is elevated or at the upper limit of your target range.
• Nuts: Choose any variety you like, but stick to one serving (¼ cup or 1 ounce). Pistachios are especially nice because the shells make the snack last longer, and each pistachio has only 3 or 4 calories.
• Reduced-fat cheese
• Hard-boiled egg
• Lettuce wrap: Place an ounce of turkey with shredded carrots and cucumber onto a romaine lettuce leaf, and wrap it up.
• Portobello “pizza:” Clean a Portobello mushroom and scrape the gills from the inside. Bake at 350˚F for about 15 minutes, until soft. Remove the mushroom from the oven and fill the cavity with jarred spaghetti sauce, a sprinkling of shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese, and dried or fresh herbs of your choice. Add some chopped bell peppers, plum tomatoes, or other vegetables if you’d like. Broil for 1–2 minutes until the cheese is melted and a bit browned.
• Sliced tomato and other nonstarchy vegetables.
If heading straight for the refrigerator at the end of the day is your routine, you could undo all of the calorie savings from earlier in the day. A handful of this and a handful of that add up quickly. If you often eat as soon as you get home because you’re over-hungry, a snack while at work or on the way home will help. Try one of the snacks on the previous page or have a piece of fruit or a few cups of popcorn. While you’re preparing dinner or waiting for it to be ready, snack on salad vegetables. If you simply eat out of habit, change up your routine so the kitchen isn’t your first stop. Enter the house through a different door and bypass the kitchen completely. Spend a few minutes relaxing, meditating, practicing yoga, or doing some other exercise before preparing meals or doing chores around your house.
A craving is simply a strong desire, but sometimes that strong desire is so strong that it seems impossible to control. Some people more easily ignore cravings than others. While you may have had little success controlling food cravings previously, there are strategies that help.
Give Yourself Permission to Eat It
This is difficult for many dieters. So many people have the notion that weight loss and blood glucose control require giving up our favorite things. Really, though, it’s about making choices and tradeoffs. Remember that you can have whatever you want, but you cannot have everything you want whenever you want it (or as much as you might want). Don’t label the food as bad. Rather, eat a small bit of the food, savor every bite, thoroughly enjoy it, and remind yourself that yes, you can have it again another time. Once you really understand that it’s okay to eat it and that you can have it again, the overwhelming desire to eat a lot disappears. In her book, Eating Thin for Life, Anne Fletcher, MS, RD, shares the dieting and maintenance strategies of 208 successful weight maintainers. These individuals have lost an average of 64 pounds and have kept it off for more than 10 years. The most frequent strategy for handling cravings? Having just a little.
Visualize Other Things
Australian researchers found that visualizing the appearance of a rainbow or other common sight curbs cravings. The theory is that cravings are strongest when you have a mental picture of the desired food, so replacing the mental image of the food with another image tames the cravings. When you’re imagining a rainbow, for example, you’re using up the brainpower that’s needed to maintain cravings for pizza or chocolate. It may take a few attempts to get the hang of it, but it’s something that you can try anywhere and anytime.
Chew on It
If you have a hankering for a snack, especially something sweet, reach for a stick of sugar-free gum instead of hitting the vending machine or raiding the pantry. A research study showed that when men and women chewed sugar-free gum for 15 minutes per hour in the afternoon, they reported less hunger, decreased cravings for sweets, and feeling more energetic than when they did not chew gum after lunch.
Find Balance
Take some “me” time. You deserve it. Get enough sleep, relax, and make time for fun to safeguard against those feelings of deprivation that often spark cravings.
You may be tempted to eat for reasons other than hunger and cravings. If you soothe a bad mood with food or find yourself grabbing something to eat because you have nothing better to do, it’s time to distract yourself. Use these ideas to make a Distraction Kit. Keep your kit handy, just like you do with your Motivation Kit, so you can use it or add to it often and with ease. Look at the box below for a few things you can include in your Distraction Kit.
WEEK 12 ACTION STEPS
Continue your current goals or rewrite them if necessary. Additionally, select from the following goals or steps, modify them, or create your own. Choose goals from the previous weeks if applicable. This week I will:
Continue the following goals: _____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
Eat snacks at planned times and only while hungry.
Keep a list of acceptable snacks on the refrigerator door and keep the right foods handy.
Carry sugar-free gum to work.
Practice visualizing a rainbow or a favorite place to control my cravings.
Allow myself a small bit of dessert at an appropriate time.
Start my Distraction Kit.
Buy nail polish, exercise bands, or _____________________________________________________________.
Other: _____________________________________________________________