Thursday 1 September 2016

Snacking and Me


Today I realised that one of the biggest single changes the 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet has enforced on me is that I no longer snack between meals. This is partly because there aren’t enough calories in my daily allowance to spare on a 100-200 calorie snack. It's also partly due to the Blood Sugar Diet teaching me what I should be eating so I'm not as hungry between meals. I try to eat only breakfast, lunch and dinner, and no puddings! Sob!!

Of course, occasionally I’ll need assistance to get me through to the next meal. I will usually have a hot drink but if that doesn’t work I will have a small handle of almonds and several raisins. And I'm pleased to report I have found eating this small, far more nutritious, snack is far more satisfying than eating half a tin of biscuits.

It was today, while I was adding some chocolate digestives to our biscuit tin (for the boys - not me!), when it suddenly dawned on me, that only a few weeks ago I would have eaten two or three biscuits while adding them to the tin, without even thinking about it. Then I might have made a coffee and sit down with another three…
There are 86 calories in a single chocolate digestive. If I’d have eaten three that’s 258 calories. Six chocolate digestives: 516! That’s more calories in a single snack than I have for most dinners! And that’s not even counting the sugar… (29.4g of sugar for six choccy digestives if you wondered – it’s recommended to have around 5g per day!)

Biscuits were my go-to snack, but they weren’t exclusive. I’d snack on anything but rarely anything healthy. Snacking had literally crept up on me and had become a way of life, a habit, without me even noticing. I would begin my snacking at around 10.30 am – with a coffee. Some mornings it seemed to take forever for the clock hands to tick round to 10.30 am while all I could think of was that tin sitting in the cupboard. And I might snack again after lunch and again after the school run and again after dinner… You get the gist.

Snacking and me go way back.

But things have changed lately, and while I’m on the 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet I won’t eat a biscuit or snack on anything so horrifyingly innutritious (think of all those empty calories I’ve consumed!). I am slowly reprogramming myself not to reach for something to eat the moment I feel hungry and cutting down on sugar has certainly helped me fight those urges to feed my hunger.

I am most certainly not a robot, so I will never say I’m not eating a biscuit ever again as it just simply wouldn't be true. But I certainly hope that they won’t creep up on me to become my go-to snack ever again.      


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