The Best Time NOT to Snack

If you’re an American, chances are you have at least once a day. While snacking isn’t a bad thing, new research is showing when you snack may have a bearing on how much weight you lose. Particularly, researchers at the Cancer Research Center have found certain types of snacks to be detrimental to weight loss.

The study was published in the December 2010 issue of the American Dietetic Association, the study assessed the eating behaviors of 123 postmenopausal women who were overweightor obese. While those who ate a healthy mid-morning snack after eating a healthy breakfast lost 11 percent of their body weight, those who skipped a snack until after lunch, lost 7 percent.  

A separate study found that participants who played a game of solitaire on the computer while eatinglunch ate twice as many post-lunch snacks as did undistracted eaters.  This makes the case for eating mindfully. Even if you’re unable to leave work to eat, don’t sit at your computer screen. If at home, turn off the television and eat at your dining table. Your stomach and brain will thank you for it.  The study also found computer players had less memory of what they ate at lunch, and felt less full following the meal. 

Snacks with Too Many Calories

Weight loss efforts may also be hampered by eating too much at snack time. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which provides information on the health and nutritionalstatus of Americans, found that Americans’ snacking now accounts for the equivalent of a 4th meal or around 580 calories a day. It is suggested to incorporate snacks that are no more than 200 calories per serving. A good rule of thumb is to have a snack that’s only about 10 percent of your total daily caloric intake. If you eat a bigger snack, consider cutting calories from the meal before and after that snack.

The Best Snacks

Those who had afternoon snacks ate more fruits and vegetables than those who skipped a snack between lunch and dinner. To bridge the gap between meals, eat fibrous and protein-rich foods to stay satiated; low-fat yogurt, string cheese, or a small handful of nuts; non-starchy vegetables; fresh fruits; whole-grain crackers; and non-calorie beverages such as water, coffee and tea.

Bottom Line

Functional snacks stave off hunger when there is a significant amount of time between meals. Snacking for any other reason may hinder your weight loss goals. 

Article by Jessy Hamawi, Club Fitness nutritionist and personal trainer

Does Taking A Multivitamin Help You Lose Weight?

Research studies have shown that a multivitamin could indeed help your waistline as well as your heart. Remember, a bottle of vitaminscannot replace or fill in the gaps of junk-food diet. Everyone has days when pizza is more tempting than a salad. Besides, some vital nutrients, such as vitamin D-3 are tough to get enough of from foods alone. That’s why doctors still recommend a multivitamin—insurance against an imbalance diet.

So why take a multivitamin, here are some reasons:

1. Losing weight:

If you’re a female and need to lose a little weight, listen to this: a recent study of overweight women lost an average of 8 lbs after taking a standard multi-vitamin for six months. The reason: because a multi can help your body slim down by filling tiny nutritional gaps that slow your metabolism.  The metabolism of takers increased by 6%, in turn, their bodies burned more calories per day.  Another study done indicated that dieters who took the multivitamin felt fuller between meals and 60% fewer hunger pangs in between.

2. Heart defense:

After tracking 34,000 women for over a decade, researchers found that taking a daily multivitamin for 5 years makes you 41% less likely to have a heart attack—that is if you don’t have signs of heart disease to begin with. It can protect the heart in many ways such as: vitamin C, niacin, vitamin B2, and vitamin B5 can help decreasing the heart-threatening plaque. Magnesium can help keep your arteries flexible and fight body wide inflammation.

Getting the right multivitamin is important. Here are some facts to keep in mind:

1. Plenty of evidence has shown that we flush most of the excess from high-dose supplements out of our system. In fact high doses of certain vitamins can be toxic and being stored in your body might lead to an increase of risk for some health problems.

2. A good multivitamin should meet the DRI, daily recommended intake. Scan the label to see if it has close to 100% of the Daily Value for everything.

—If you are a menopausal woman, talk to you OB/GYN

3. Women need 1,000 to 2,000 mg of calcium per day but should be able to get half of that from food. However, men may want to limit that intake to 500 mg due to some links to prostate cancer. A smart choice for womenwould be 600 mg calcium supplements with 200 mg of magnesium (the magnesium helps keeping the calcium from constipating you).

4. Most people need at least 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day. Vitamin D3 helps make the form when the sun hits your skin. If you’re multivitamin has less than that, make up the difference with a vitamin D3 supplement.

Article by Jessy Hamawi, Club Fitness Nutritionist and Personal Trainer