Snack ideas when trying to lose weight

[Youaremysunshine09]

I really need to lose 4-5 stone! I can't seem to stop snacking on chocolate, crisps, anything sweet.

Looking for recommendations of snacks people eat when they are on a diet. How do you have the willpower to stay on track? I have tried so many times and failed.

Are you eating when you're stressed/bored/tired/ thirsty?

If my food is satisfying (tasty meals with lots of veg and some fruit) I don't really want any snacks. I do struggle if DH and DS are having something at night though. Fear of missing out I suppose. Bought 85% chocolate from Aldi to have something, but inclined towards eating more of it than I should.

Have you looked at low carb bootcamp on here? It's quite a satisfying way of eating and if you feel like a snack it's fine, just as long as it's low carb.

I'm working on removing some lockdown pudge and had just finished mournfully eating some mini carrots when I read this post.
The best way of not snacking on junk for me is to not have anything junky in the house.
Dc have set aside snacks to take to school and they are currently the only snacks in the house.
( There is also no wine in the house for the same reason!)

Sugar-free jelly is quite a good snack, with almost no calories.

For sweet cravings, I have meringue nests in the house.

One meringue nest is 50-odd calories, and is so sweet that it limits any desire to have more than one.

Other than that- celery with salt, caramel rice cakes occasionally, low-cal crisps. When I'm dieting, the rest of my food intake is very healthy, home-cooked fare, so the junk food nature of my snacks makes it feel extra 'special', iyswim.

Honestly? Don't snack. Not at all. Keep nothing tempting in the house, if you're worried about willpower. Nobody NEEDS to snack, it's not the way humans are designed to work.

I'd also look into intermittent fasting. It works really well for me, a reformed sugar addict. I now work all day within arms reach of The Snack Drawer which is still filled with crap. But I'm not in my 'eating window' which gives me the power to just ignore it until later. I know I can have whatever I want, just LATER.

And when 'later' comes, and I've had a decent evening meal and a glass of wine, do you know what? I'm not actually quite so drawn to all the sugary stuff anyway. But most nights I will have something or other e.g. a chocolate bar after my meal. And it's fine, because I haven't been stuffing my face all day and by fasting I've been using up some of the lovely fuel I have stored on my body i.e. my fat. :-) If you are doing three meals a day plus snacks, your insulin levels will stay high and when your insulin levels are high you become 'antilypolitic' which is a fancy way of saying you can't access your stored fat for fuel. Instead - if you're cutting calories - your body will just adapt to the new calorie intake and your metabolism will slow. Which is really, really not what you want to happen.

If you're not familiar with Intermittent Fasting, then ginstephens.com is a good place to start. :-)

Another vote for meringue nests! Crumbled over some fat free Greek yogurt with chopped strawberries and blueberries... amazing and less than 200kcal

Meringue contains a lot of sugar.
I don't think people understand the role sugar plays in cravings and energy dips if it's being suggested as a snack to support weightloss.

Meringue nests are pure sugar and a terrible, terrible idea - even if they're comparatively low in calories. You don't need to snack. Getting out of the habit will be far better for you, long term, rather than finding faddy substitutes.

When I was fat I snacked a lot in the evenings, often with a glass of wine. Cutting out the booze and stopping all snacks outside meals, apart from perhaps a banana after a very long run, has been key - for me - for losing a lot of weight and keeping it off long-term.

@Time40

Sugar-free jelly is quite a good snack, with almost no calories.

Not the doughnut one!!!!

Kallo rice cakes. Blueberry and Vanilla. 35 calories each

Crudités and houmous (measure the houmous though!)
Fruit
Popcorn
Hardboiled egg

I personally can't not snack, I'm very much a grazer but I do have smaller meal portions.

I would agree with the no snacking suggestions. Have three proper healthy meals and that should be enough. Once I start snacking I can't stop so i just avoid having snack food in the house.

Salt and vinegar pea snacks from
Aldi. Like a filling bag of crisps and around 70 calories for a decent sized bag.

Also frozen fruit such as raspberries or blueberries. Kids did some fake haribo which were grapes covered in a jelly mix sachet and froze them. They were fab in an awful way as an occasional treat.

Popcorn or low cal cereal bars are good.
Other than that just plenty of fruit and water.

I would say go cold turkey...

No snacks ...

But if you have to then just fruit and veg.

More raw veg if u can

Weirdly, cheese.

I had to get over a sweet tooth and the only way was replacing sugar with fat. I ate huge amounts of cheese on day one and two but by day three the cravings had lessened and I ended up not actually snacking at all most days. If I want to snack nowadays it's nuts, cheese cubes, fruit or a light yoghurt. I lost half a stone in the first two weeks alone. To get over the cravings I didn't restrict savoury foods at all and still lost weight.

Meringue nests are pure sugar and a terrible, terrible idea

Yes, they are pure sugar. I'd disagree that they're a 'terrible, terrible idea'.

The OP asked what snacks people recommended, I told her about the meringue nests because I find they work for me. But then, the rest of my diet is very healthy.

As for the 'no need to snack' -actually, the jury is out on that one. It works for some people, not for others. If it works for you, that's great. But some people work better on smaller meals and a couple of snacks.

When I need to diet, I find that the idea of having a small, sweet treat in the house keeps me going. Again, some more worthy people than me will cut out all such treats, and fair play to them, if that's what they want to do. But it's not the only way to approach it.

All the fake-sugar and high sugar snacks are just gonna make you feel more snacky and mess with your blood sugar

Go for protein always. Some slices of turkey or a boiled egg or pieces of cheese

I agree with people saying protein always - slices of chicken, turkey, or a bit of cheese, boiled egg.
For me what worked best was going cold turkey (as in stopping, not having turkey slices lol).
That way, I could just forget about snacks and not have to make the decision of what to have, how much, etc. If I got hungry, I would just drink water or tea and wait for my next meal. After a short time I didn't have many cravings anymore.

What I found helped when I had the munchies:
Baked omelette squares
Boiled eggs
Crudités with hummus, low fat sour cream etc.
Cheesy quesadillas
Mint tea
Fruit
Salads with more protein (helps if you have precooked chicken breasts that you can add)
Yoghurt with homemade granola

Air-popped corn is brilliant. it feels like having a cheeky bag of crisps, but half the calories, and actually counts as a '5-a-day'. I have one of these:

groceries.asda.com/product/lunch-boxes-bags/sistema-soup-mug/1000262322127?&cmpid=ppc--ghs----google---_-dskwid-s92700059046120640_dc&s_kwcid=AL!11432!3!482369556466!!!g!336182679350!&ds_rl=1254319&gclid=Cj0KCQjwl9GCBhDvARIsAFunhslwDBbaEFJczPq8fpoPm8bgBF02OGAnc1aVX9O4N73i1r7xu7v-MPMaAofhEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

And just scatter a rounded tablespoon of corn kernels in there, sprinkle on some salt and pepper and pop it in the microwave.

Gherkins are quite good as you physically can't eat too many of them or you start feeling sick, but they'll take the edge of your hunger.

Get into the habit of only snacking wen you're properly hungry, never denying yourself snacks but sticking to only healthy stuff. Seriously I've been known to chop a carrot and a parsnip, cook them in the sistema mug (only takes a couple of mins), add some sage stuffing seasoning and eat that. Much more filling that rice cakes or other marketed 'diet' snacks, but perfectly healthy, nutritious and pleasant tasting.

Popcorn, made with Frylight butter flavour (and salted, not sweet)

Pumpkin seeds, toasted in a dry pan with a dash of soy sauce

If I really need something sweet then the Aldi little boxes of sugar free sweets are nice, one of those sorts me out but I'm trying to get rid of my sweet tooth

@FurrySlipperBoots Oh the Sistema mug is a great idea for making popcorn! 👍