We’ve all been there before. Those delicious donuts laying there in the office break room one morning with flavors you’ve never seen before. As your mouth waters staring at those freshly glazed pastries you tell yourself “just one donut won’t ruin my diet.” Once that glazed pastry hits your lips you can’t help but tell yourself a couple more throughout the day couldn’t hurt. Soon you find yourself blowing past your daily calorie target assigned in your Meal Plan and ruining those last couple of days of clean eating and hard exercise. Here are some of my own personal tips to help prevent the day to day office snacking.
1. Eat Breakfast
There’s a reason why they call it break-fast. You are fasting from the time you ate dinner last night up until the 1st meal of the day in which you are breaking that 8+ hour fast. With your body starving for food, you’ll find yourself more susceptible to grabbing that delicious snack early in the morning. Instead, eat a healthy breakfast first thing in the morning to curb your hunger.
2. Drink Lots of Water
Your body is composed of about 60% water and essential to maintain daily bodily functions. Studies have shown that drinking water before a meal can make us feel more full thus reducing the urge to binge snack throughout the day. People often times mistake thirst for hunger causing you to eat more and gain weight. Try the Gallon Water Challenge in which you aim to drink 1 gallon of water everyday and it’ll help ensure you are fully hydrated.
3. Bring Healthy Meals and Snacks to Work
This is a no brainer, but if you stick to your Meal Plan consistently each day without skipping meals, you’ll feel more full throughout the day and have less of an urge to snack. Sometimes that urge to snack can feel unavoidable due to stress and other uncontrollable emotions so try bringing in healthy low calorie alternatives such as carrots, celery sticks, almonds. What about fruits you ask? I tend to stay away from snacking on fruits (besides what’s allotted in my Meal Plan) because of the higher sugar levels and craving for more sugary items, especially when you are cutting sugar from your diet.
4. Treat Snacks as Meals
The Meal Plans I design for my clients usually consist of 5-6 meals spread throughout the day with specific calorie and macro targets to help them meet their fitness goals. Three or four of these meals are what I call solid meals (i.e. grilled chicken and sweet potatoes) while the other couple of meals are more like healthy snacks such as protein shakes with a complex carbs source. For weight loss or cutting programs, adding an additional snack/meal to the Meal Plan may exceed the allotted calorie target for the day causing weight gain.
5. Stay Away from Sugar
Sugar addiction is a real problem causing people to crave sweets. In order to break this vicious addiction, you need to reduce sugar from your diet. If you are a soda or juice drinker, try substituting those sugary drinks with water. I even tend to stay away from diet drinks and artificial sweeteners as I feel it tricks the mind into craving more sugar. A diet high in protein and low in carbs is also shown to reduce these sugary cravings which is why my weight loss and cutting Meal Plans are setup this way.
Of course with any new diet or exercise program it is recommended that you consult with your physician or other health care professional. Healthy snacking everyone!