7 Snacks to Avoid When You’re Trying to Lose Weight
Snacks to Avoid when you’re dieting to shed off those nasty pounds!
We all like to have a little snack every once in a while. It builds up our energy, helps us get away from our boring work at our boring desk. And of course, our day just gets much better when we gorge down a melted chocolate brownie or a large chocolate chip cookie. But all these habits certainly don’t go well with our healthy when we’re trying to shed away those nasty pounds. Snacking is usually avoided during a diet but if you do it the right away, it can actually help you speed up your weight loss and shed more pounds quicker!
You see, proper snacks that are high in nutrients and low in fats actually work to speed up your metabolism and control those pangs of hunger that cause you to crave huge slices of pizza and baked potatoes. But eating the wrong kind of snacks can most definitely ruin your diet, and that means you should watch out for packaged foods that say “healthy” on the label and are actually brimming with carbs, sugars and fats.
Here are the kinds of snacks you need to avoid religiously if you want to shed those pounds for good!
1. Rice Cakes
The popular opinion about rice cakes portrays them as the healthiest food choices for snacks since they are extremely low in calories and contain absolutely no fats. But hey, they are also extremely high on the glycemic index. While sugar itself has a rating of 100, rice cakes rate up to 82, making them bad choice during a diet regardless of the calorie count. So if you feel like having a rice cake, treat yourself to air-popped popcorns and gorge them down with different healthy toppings, like mustard or olive oil.
2. Trail Mix
Trail mix is a snack that we all love gorging on at our desk or practically everywhere else. It is yummy, supposedly light and very sweet. But it contains a great deal of processed chocolate and that is definitely not going to help you with your diet. Therefore, if you want to enjoy a sweet bar of goodness, why not opt for fruity bars or nut bars.
You can even make your own bars with fruits and nuts, like walnuts, almonds, apricots, cherries and many others. They will enrich your body with countless nutrients, energize you during the day and fill you up unlike those fat filled empty calories you take in with trail mix.
3. Pretzels
As much as you may like stocking up on pretzels, you simply cannot deny that these all-time favourite snacks are horribly rich in sodium. When you’re consuming a high quantity of sodium, which in the case of one serving of pretzels equals to 20% of your daily diet, your water retention speeds up and you feel bloated and puffy.
The worst part is, high levels of sodium have been directly linked to heart diseases. So, if you feel a craving for pretzels, delight yourself with salted peanuts or slated and shelled pistachios. They are rich in fibers and proteins and they will also fill you up so you don’t feel too hungry and end up making another unhealthy eating choice.
4. Bottled Smoothies
Bottled smoothies are often considered a good choice among the low-calorie items. But if truth be told, they contain more than just one serving in a bottle. The best way to ensure how many calories are present in your smoothie is to make it yourself. You get to add all the ingredients you want and enjoy the essential nutrients present in fresh fruits. Besides, there are countless smoothies that can help you slim up and delight your taste buds with their fruity essence, so why waste your money and your health on the bottled ones, hmm?
5. Diet Soda
Diet sodas contain heaps and heaps of artificial sweeteners that tend to fill you up and control your cravings, but also, slow down your metabolism and your digestive system.
If you’re hooked, stopping yourself from craving diet soda can be a hard decision, but once you get started on avoiding it, it seems like the best decision you ever made. So, next time you start craving a diet soda, have some detox water or sparkling flavoured water instead.
6. Banana Chips
Most people tend to believe that banana chips make a healthy snacks because they are rich in bananas. Allow me to break it to you that this is an utter and complete myth.
These banana chips are fried, making them extremely rich in saturated fats. So, if you’re gorging these down by the minute and wondering why you’re diet isn’t working, there you have it! Instead of wasting your money on banana chips, treat yourself to the best alternative, an actual banana.
A banana will provide your body 121 calories and loads of fiber along with vitamins B and C, without a single trace of saturated fat. But if you really want to munch on chips, try kale chips which make a much healthier treat.
7. Chocolate Pudding
A cup of chocolate pudding is largely hailed as a low calorie trick to give yourself a quick chocolate fix, but it’s actually a bad trick because it lacks the essential nutrients a snack must contain to energize your body.
Instead of chocolate pudding, why don’t you go ahead and take the liberty of indulging in dark chocolate?
Dark chocolate is rich with cocoa, which has a huge antioxidant makeup, and also, it contains less amount of carbs and sugar while the fiber content is way higher than chocolate pudding. So, here’s the perfect excuse you need to add a little bit of chocolate to your diet!