200 Calories of Your Favorite Snacks

                       


Check out what 200 calories of some of the popular snacks looks like. Good to know when you have that craving.

Let me know what you think?

4 'Unhealthy Snacks' Approved By A Nutritionist

Going on a diet can be confusing and often leaves you with the same empty feeling as you search for healthy snacks. We've all heard experts tell us that we shouldn't be eating junk food, but the thought of another rice cake is going to collectively drive us all insane. So what do the experts actually eat? They can't all just live on kale and sunshine, right?

Culinary nutritionist Keisha Luke, gave us her secret list of foods she's eating that you'd probably love to eat as well. It's important to note that these are not her cheat meals. These foods that you've been craving ever since you bought that new water bottle and those yoga bottoms are actually part of her healthy diet — and they should be part of yours, too!

Chocolate

That's right — chocolate can be part of a healthy diet. According to Luke, "Chocolate has many healthy benefits, including it being high in magnesium and some amazing anti-inflammatory properties." But not all chocolate is created equally. Luke cautions that you limit your chocolate fix to "raw chocolate like cocoa nibs or powder that is without additives and preservatives." So go ahead and make some brownies, chocolate fudge cakes, or even a pudding.

Reduce Those Cravings Fast ! Here's How.

Want to keep your Cheetos cravings in check? Your go-to strategy might be wrong: Eating just a little of your favorite snack doesn’t help reduce your cravings at all, a new study in the journal Obesity suggests.

Researchers had 367 people who were trying to lose weight keep food logs to see if their cravings changed depending on what they ate. They discovered that cravings for foods decreased when people consumed them less frequently—but there was no change at all in their cravings if they simply ate what they craved in smaller amounts.

That means if you want to stop craving a certain food—say, you can’t resist a bag of hot salty fries, or you need a couple scoops of ice cream to top off your day—you’re better off eating it less often than simply reducing your portion of it, the researchers say.

Related: Eating this Snack May Fight Your Junk Food Craving

It likely comes down to your conditioning response: Your cravings exist in combination with internal stimuli, like stress, or external stimuli, like time or day or behavior. So if you consume the cravings during the stimuli previously, whenever that comes up again, you’ll feel the urge to chow down.

5 Afternoon Habits That WILL make you gain weight.

Let's be real: Making it to lunch without committing any diet sins is actually pretty easy. We all know it's those afternoon hours that make it nearly impossible to stay in the clear  until it’s time for a healthy dinner. 

Everything from sitting in meetings all afternoon to giving into mindless midday munching at your desk can quickly contribute to added pounds. (We’re looking at you leftover dessert tray and vending machine full of temping salty snacks...)

To get the skinny on where waistline saboteurs might be lying, we spoke to Alissa Rumsey, R.D., C.S.C.S., author of Three Steps to a Healthier You, about the most common afternoon habits that are making you gain weight and how to turn them into habits that are actually healthy.

According to Rumsey, here are the top five afternoon behaviors you should pay attention to: 

7 Weight Loss Mistakes You May Be Making At Work

You don't need us to tell you that those free office donuts and weekly birthday celebrations are bad news for your diet (seriously, how can there be so many birthdays?!). 

But those aren't the only work hazards stalling your weight loss progress: There's no shortage of seemingly innocent on-the-job habits that can make you take in more calories than you need. And we're betting at least a few of these sound uncomfortably familiar.

Here are 7 workday mistakes that aren't doing your suit size any favors—and how to get back to a place you feel good about. 

Love Snacking? Try These 3 Tips.

Snack time isn't just for 3-year-olds! Because it can satiate hunger between meals to prevent overeating and help you lose weight, it's great for adults, too! But if you snack the wrong way, it could make you gain weight, so follow these three rules.

·         It's not a mini-meal: Aim to eat a snack that's around 150 calories or less. This should be a little something to tide you over until your next meal and shouldn't leave you feeling full. Here are 150-calorie snack ideas from savoury to sweet, whatever you're craving.

10 Weight Loss Success Strategies - Part 1 of 2

Weight-loss success is much more likely if you follow some important behavioral strategies in addition to the choices you make for every meal. Based on my many years of experience working with hospital patients and the clients in my private practice, I've identified 10 Success Strategies that go a long way toward helping people stick to a weight-loss plan.

These strategies are simple—no need to reorganize your life to fit them in. Just start working them into your daily routines, and before you know it, you'll be much better positioned for weight loss success

Success Strategy #1: Eat within the first hour of awakening

When you are at rest, your body wants to conserve energy, so your metabolism slows down. Just as you shut off the lights when you sleep, your body turns down many of the processes involved in metabolism. When you wake up, you want to turn everything up and start burning calories and fat as soon as possible. That's why I recommend eating breakfast within one hour of waking up.

By eating a nutritious, energy-revving breakfast, you are jump-starting your metabolism. When you add healthy food to your tank, so to speak, you prime your engines and get them ready to go, go, go for the day, so you can do everything that you have to do as well as those things you want to do, while feeling energetic.

Despite what you may have heard or read, it still stands that if you skip breakfast, you're telling your body to stay in conservation mode. You're setting yourself up to feel tired, lethargic, and irritable. When no fuel comes into your tank, your body starts thinking about holding on to calories and fat rather than burning them because it doesn't know when more food will come. This is absolutely not the way you want to start your day. Even if you don't feel like having breakfast, push yourself to have something—an apple, an orange, some yogurt, maybe a glass of vegetable juice. Something is better than nothing.

Success Strategy #2: Eat early and often

Many people follow this kind of daily eating plan: They either skip breakfast or have a small bite in the morning. They go light on lunch. Then their hunger roars like a starved lion in the middle of the afternoon, at which point they start eating sweet/salty junk food. Then at dinner, thinking they didn't really eat much during the day, they help themselves to giant portions of their evening meal, followed by dessert and bowls of ice cream and chips while sitting around watching TV for a few hours before bed.

This is not the way to eat.

It's much better for your body to eat early and often. That means having a healthy, lean, green breakfast; a morning snack to keep your metabolism humming; a healthy lunch; an afternoon snack; and a dinner that's smaller than you're probably used to, with a small snack in the evening. Ideally you should eat the bulk of your calories at breakfast and lunch.

Researchers have found that people who consume most of their calories before 3 p.m. are more likely to be successful at weight loss than those who pile on the calories later in the day. And get this: It takes 24 hours for your blood sugar to stabilize after a late-night meal. Eating earlier gives your body plenty of time to burn up calories and stabilize your blood sugar before you get into bed.

Success Strategy #3: Get 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night

We Americans are an exhausted bunch of people. Although sleep researchers recommend 7 to 8 hours per night, studies show that 30 percent of us get fewer than 6 hours of sleep a night. 

Being chronically tired truly interferes with your health. Lack of sleep is associated with higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity, and cancer. In fact, studies show that getting fewer than 5 hours of sleep per night is associated with a higher body-mass index. The more sleep-deprived you are, the higher your risk of obesity. Insomnia causes hormonal changes and cravings for carbohydrates. And when you deprive yourself of adequate sleep, fatigue lowers your ability to resist trigger foods. Instead of eating, try taking a power nap for a bigger, more effective payoff.

Nighttime sleep even has an effect on daytime hunger, influencing the production of the hormones that regulate appetite. When we're over-tired, we tend to eat more than we do when we are well rested. Overall, people who sleep less appear to weigh more. Be sure to get your 7 to 8 hours a night. If you're having trouble sleeping, see your doctor; you may have a sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea.  

Success Strategy #4: Eat snacks that are no larger than your closed fist

Incorporating snacks into your daily meal plan is a helpful way to prevent hunger. But in order to stay on track, you have to make sure your snacks are a reasonable size. One of the eas- iest ways to do this is to eat snacks that are no larger than your closed fist.

The exception to this is free foods (leafy green vegetables, which contribute few calories) and calorie-free beverages, such as coffee and tea. For example, a closed fist holds about half an ounce (1 tablespoon) of nuts. But remember, I'm talking about a closed fist, not an open palm.

Success Strategy #5: Drink half your body weight in water

Drinking water helps fill your stomach and boosts your body's metabolism, so fool yourself into drinking more water. It also keeps you hydrated, which is important because often we mistake thirst for hunger, leading us to eat high-calorie snacks when all our bodies really want is a glass of water. To figure out how much water to drink, divide your weight in half. If you're 160 pounds, aim for about 80 ounces (10 8-ounce glasses) per day. Liquids such as unsweetened coffee, tea, and seltzer can also count in your daily tally.

But keep in mind that caffeinated beverages, though acceptable, are also diuretics, meaning the caffeine dehydrates your body and makes you pee. A good way to offset this effect is to drink a glass of water for each cup of coffee or tea you consume. Make the water ice cold, because drinking cold water revs up the metabolism even more. Your body has to work harder to stabilize its temperature and, in so doing, burns more calories for you. Winner!

To add pizazz to water and seltzer, make grape-cubes. Place a grape or two in each section of an ice cube tray, and then fill with water. Once they're frozen, pop these grape-cubes into water for a refreshing, tasty drink. This works for cut pieces of almost any of your favorite fruits. Think pineapple, mango, berries, peaches, nectarines, and melon.

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Adapted from Lose Your Final 15