You know the feeling you get when you just have the urge to snack. It’s almost always nothing to do with whether or not you’re actually hungry. Instead, there’s a trigger that strikes straight at our primitive roots that says “snack now!”
Whether it’s the smell of fresh bread, cunningly wafted around the store by supermarkets to entice us or the notion of a freshly brewed cup of coffee (again, a nose grabber) or someone cooking bacon in what seems to be a 5 mile radius.
Those are the smell (or olfactory) factors in snacking.
But there are other triggers that cause us to snack between meals.
Sometimes it’s habit: the tea trolley that used to come round at work had a routine and that sticks with you even if the trolley and the person wheeling it are long gone. Your stomach just says “it’s time for elevenses” or whatever and you get the urge to snack, regardless of whether there’s any need to digest more food.
Another snacking habit a lot of people get into is eating whilst watching television or a movie. In fact, cinemas encourage this with their oversized tubs of popcorn, plates of nachos dripping with melted cheese and industrial size soft drinks. So we take that idea home with us and – before you know it – you’re snacking whilst watching the television and the family sized packet of Doritos served one person – you.
None of which answers the question of whether snacking between meals is good or bad.
Snacks in moderation are almost certainly OK. Different doctors will give you different answers – some will say stick to three square meals a day, others will say that snacking or grazing is fine. Of course, they’ll almost all quietly add in the phrase “as part of a calorie controlled diet” just to keep themselves off any possible hook.
If the snack you’re about to eat is there because you’re genuinely hungry then no-one should be able to argue with that.
If it’s there as comfort food then maybe there’s a place for it as well, so long as you don’t devour half the store in the process of attending to your snacking need.
So on the answer to the question “is snacking between meals good or bad?” I’m going to sit on the fence.
Deep down you’ll know the answer for you. Your bathroom scales will likely know as well but you’ve probably sworn them to secrecy.
And whether or not you do anything to reduce your snacking is down to you as well – me nagging won’t help and could even make it worse!
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Many people have an unscientific approach to dieting. They see the headline: “Lose one pound a week if you cut your food intake by 500 calories a day”. Without much thought, they sign up because 500 calories does not sound very many calories to lose and one pound lost every week is a good reward to aim for. So then they start asking the important questions like, “What is a calorie?” and “How do you measure the number of calories?” This can finish a few people’s interest before they start. Some will just assume they can guess and it will all turn out right if they eat less. It takes slightly more commitment to make it to the final stage which is menu planning. Why plan menus? Because one of the problems of many diets is they get boring unless you change things around on a regular basis. So actually sitting down to pick out a few recipes you like and put a week’s menu together is a good way of keeping up interest. All of which brings us to the Big Breakfast Diet.
Recently, a team of researchers based at the Virginia Commonwealth University found that women who ate bigger breakfasts as part of a low-carb diet lost more weight than those who ate a low-carb diet spread out over the day. Both groups ate between 1,200 and 1,300 calories a day but the “big breakfast” is at least half the daily intake. You do not have to eat all this in one sitting. You can spread it out between the time you wake and 9 a.m. The intention is to help you feel full. In turn, this will give you the strength to resist the temptation to snack before you get to lunch. The ideal strategy sees you come down to three meals a day at regular times with no other food added in. When starting off, you may find it useful to keep some fruit around and, if you do feel a little hungry, eat an apple. Remember to cut out sweetened juices and sodas, and drink plenty of water.
As breakfast, look for a good mixture of low carb and protein. Fruit, cereal with milk, two slices of wholegrain bread, and your choice of eggs, some cheese, or slices of ham or turkey, i.e. a continental style of breakfast. Lunch and dinner should be more exclusively low carb, aiming for about 350 calories per meal. They can be based around a few ounces of chicken, turkey, pork or fish with plenty of green vegetables and a side salad, i.e. some protein and low GI, low starch vegetables and greens. The results showed both groups of dieters losing about the same percentage of body weight during the first four months but, after that, the big breakfasters went on to lose significantly more weight. By the end of the eighth week, the big breakfast group had lost up to four times the weight of the low-carb group. If motivation does prove a problem, you can add phentermine into the weight loss strategy to cover the afternoon when the craving for a snack may catch you unawares. It is easy to buy phentermine online and it offers complete appetite suppression, seeing you through into the evening without giving in to snacking. With this drug’s help, you can maintain the diet and lose a significant number of pounds.
You can make your wooden bird feeder as simple or extravagant as you desire, according to your level of expertise. Those who are more adept with the tools of woodworking, may want to try their hand at making a wooden castle bird feeder. The idea behind this is to have all the stools on each side of the castle manufactured so as to stick out for the birds to eat their food out of. Or maybe you consider yourself to be talented enough to make a tube that spirals around, having a trough for the birds to snack away at. However, if you are not so talented and have never built one before, you may want to start with a simple step-by-step design.
You could try starting with a simple wooden tray feeder, where you just glue and nail a few pieces of wood together. As you become more experienced in constructing your wooden bird feeders, you’ll be able to experiment a bit more until you feel confident enough to make the bigger feeders that call for a lot more talent and patience. As a child, perhaps you may have built your very first wooden tray feeders in wood shop. On the other hand, if you weren’t fortunate enough to take the class you may have built your own bird feeder at home using a soda bottle or a coffee can. I can remember, back when I was a child, taking the empty coffee can, filling it up with my dad’s sunflower seeds and hanging it from a tree just to watch the birds come to the yard Endless hours of pleasure!
Check out this quick and easy way to make a simple wooden tray feeder. Please keep in mind that if you are a child you will need adult supervision.
MAKING A WOODEN TRAY FEEDER
4 pieces of wood about 2 inches wide
1 square piece of wood
Nails
Use the square piece of wood as the base for your wooden tray feeder. Now take your four pieces of wood and prop them up on all sides of the square. Hammer each strip to the base until you have a small square dish with sides. Insert a newspaper into the base, making sure to flatten it down properly so it doesn’t fly out. Pour in the seeds and you are set to go. On top of a large post or table would be a great place to position your tray.
Children love building bird feeders as well. Once they spot you making one they’ll naturally want to do something to help. Try giving them a pine cone, butter knife and some peanut butter and have them spread it all over the pine cone. When finished, have them sprinkle seeds all over it. They’ll be happy that they got to make a bird feeder too.
Hopper feeders are little wooden bird feeders that look like houses; birds love these because they keep the wind and rain off them.
When caring for your wooden bird feeders always remember that you need to empty them of food every night, unless you can somehow cover them. Rain can ruin bird seeds and make birds extremely sick, and I’m sure that’s the last thing you want.
Bird watching has always been, and always will be, a fun hobby. By building your own wooden bird feeders, you can make this a time full of memories for you and your children.
Decide what type of feeder you’ll use and where in the yard it will go. Location is a key item when it comes to wooden bird feeders. If you don’t have it in the right place the birds may never find it.
Dieting is always a challenge to your will power. You stay home and there’s all that food just sitting there in your kitchen waiting to be eaten. You always have to resist walking those few yards and picking up a snack between meals. When you feel thirsty, you have to pass over the sodas in favor of water or something “sugar-free”. This is not so bad if everyone in the house is following the diet. Then, you can decide to empty the kitchen of everything that might add pounds to the family’s waistlines. You reinforce each other’s commitment by sharing out the pain equally. When it comes to cooking, you can control exactly what goes into each meal. The amount on each plate – well, you did remember to buy smaller plates to make every portion look bigger. With everyone onside, the family weight problem can be brought under control. But what happens if you eat out?
There’s something about eating out. Perhaps it’s the fact you have paid for the meal and so want to feel you got value-for-money by inhaling every last crumb of food from the plate. Whatever the reason, those big portions usually hide major quantities of calories – like about a day’s supply in one heaped delivery to your stomach. It usually takes about ten minutes and then you suddenly feel uncomfortably full. You have been very disciplined at home. Your stomach has actually begun to shrink a little. That food just undid all the good work you put in. So how do you avoid the discomfort and not blow your diet out of the water?
Start on the internet and check out the menus of your favorite restaurants. All the responsible eateries now list nutritional information (in some cities, this is a legal requirement). If there’s no helpful information, reverse the process. A site like http://healthydiningfinder.com let’s you search by city, state or zip code to find the right places to eat within your budget and without damaging your daily calorie limit. Once you arrive in the diner or restaurant, look for the healthier choices on the menu. These are the items steamed rather than fried, and lacking the sauces heavy in butter and cream. When it comes to portions you have a choice. Ask for a smaller portion, get a regular portion and take half home for the next day, or get a supersize and share it. It’s better not to indulge in a dessert. They tend to be full of fat. Go home and have a yogurt.
Follow these simple rules and you will not fall off the wagon. You should have a daily maximum target for calories. Balance the meal against that and eat less before and after. If you feel hungry, there’s always phentermine to control your appetite. It’s been around for more years than most other drugs, but it survives because it’s good at what it does. Phentermine genuinely does kill the hunger pangs and allows you to keep to a diet that will reduce your weight. If you also manage two or three sessions of physical exercise every week, the combination should see you lose a good percentage of your body weight. In the end, how much you lose and whether you stay lighter depends on your will power. With strength of mind, you can maintain a healthy weight.
If you are looking for ways to reduce your grocery expenditure, this might just be the thing you are looking for. This is an extremely simple technique but it does require some effort and dedication. If you look at your grocery shopping list over some time, you will notice something peculiar.
You will find that there are quite a few items which you get over and over again. It could be your favourite snack, salad dip or a specific brand of tea.
Now, you can’t get coupons for these regular items all the time and frankly speaking, it is too time consuming to look through the newspaper and collect these coupons everytime.
So here’s what you do.
In summary, you need to set up a system for emailing companies to request for these coupons. The task of emailing each company may seem hard but if you break it down to small steps done on a weekly basis, it becomes very easy.
Here are the step-by-step instructions:
1. Identify grocery items that you purchase regularly. Keep a list of it.
2. Locate the company that manufactures each grocery item.
3. Do a search in your favorite search engine and find the company’s URL.
4. Visit the manufacturer’s website and copy down its contact email address.
5. Prepare a brief email to the company. Keep it simple, polite and clearly state the following things:
- If you have or have not tried the product.
- How regular you purchase the product.
- The name of the store you frequent.
- How you use the product. This is also a good opportunity to compliment the product.
- Your full name and mailing address.
- Lastly, put in your email address.
Example:
Our family always enjoys a big Saturday morning breakfast together and it always includes a large portion of Aunt Jemima Buttermilk Pancakes. The pancakes are yummy, quick and always come out perfectly.
I would like to receive product information including recipe ideas, new products launches and coupons which may be available in the future. Please add me to your company’s mailing list.
Thank you,
Your full name
Street Address
City, Town Zip code
Email address
Now you might not receive any response. These companies receive a lot of emails from consumers so it might take a while before you get any response from them.
It’s vital not to get discouraged by it. If you send enough emails, the effort will pay off and you will soon see your inbox filled with coupons. All you need is a little dedication and soon, you will see a steady flow of coupons coming to your inbox without you lifting a finger.
Happy sending those emails!