Snacking and fat loss

Common snacking traps

• Grazing: picking at food while cooking, finishing the kids' plates, a biscuit every time you pass the tin.
• Office food: birthday cakes, sweets on desks and biscuits in meetings.
• Screen snacking: crisps and chocolate in front of the TV, eaten without noticing.
• Healthy-sounding snacks: nuts, trail mix, granola bars, dried fruit, smoothies and some protein bars are nutritious but dense in calories.
• Drinks: large lattes and hot chocolates with cream count as snacks in calorie terms.
• Commute snacks: petrol station and train station stops on the way home.

A small handful of mixed nuts (30 g) is around 180 kcal, but an open bag on your desk can easily become 100 g and 600 kcal over an afternoon without you really noticing.

Kids' food is a particularly sneaky one. A few of their crisps, a biscuit from the lunchbox multipack and the last of the fish fingers rarely feel like eating, but they add up.

Hunger or habit?

Before reaching for a snack, it helps to ask what you actually need. Physical hunger builds gradually, can be satisfied by most foods and goes away once you have eaten. Habit or emotional eating tends to come on suddenly, craves specific foods and often turns up alongside boredom, stress, tiredness or certain times and places.

• Am I physically hungry, or is it the time of day or the situation?
• When did I last eat, and did that meal have enough protein?
• Would I eat an apple or a boiled egg right now? If not, it probably is not hunger.
• Am I tired, bored, stressed or thirsty?

If it is not hunger, a glass of water, a short walk or changing what you are doing often moves you on. Our guide to emotional eating goes deeper.

Build better snacks

A good fat loss snack has protein or fibre, ideally both, and a calorie count you roughly know. Some examples:

• 150 g of 0% Greek style yoghurt with a handful of berries: about 110 to 140 kcal and 15 g protein.
• A protein yoghurt or pot of skyr: around 100 to 150 kcal and 12 to 20 g protein.
• Two boiled eggs: about 140 to 160 kcal and 12 to 14 g protein.
• An apple with 15 g of peanut butter: about 170 to 190 kcal.
• A tin of tuna with a couple of rice cakes: about 170 to 200 kcal and around 25 g protein.
• Carrot and pepper sticks with 50 g of reduced-fat hummus: about 130 to 150 kcal.
• A small pack of beef jerky: around 70 to 100 kcal and roughly 12 to 15 g protein.
• A 250 ml glass of semi-skimmed milk: about 120 kcal and 9 g protein.

Our guide to high protein snacks has plenty more ideas, including ones you can keep in a bag or desk drawer.

Planning snacks into your day

If you like snacks, plan them rather than fight them. Decide how many you will have, roughly when and what they are, then make your meals slightly smaller to fit them in. A common pattern is three meals and one or two planned snacks, often mid-afternoon and possibly after evening training.

Pre-portion anything calorie-dense. Put 30 g of nuts in a small tub rather than taking the bag to your desk. Keep treats out of sight at home and fruit and yoghurt at the front of the fridge. These small changes to your surroundings do more than willpower ever will.

If you work from home, the kitchen is always ten steps away. Setting fixed snack times and working in a room away from the kitchen helps more than you might expect.

Treats still fit

Chocolate, crisps and biscuits do not need to be banned. Strict bans tend to backfire and lead to all-or-nothing eating. A small, planned treat a few times a week, eaten slowly and actually enjoyed, fits into most fat loss plans. Buy single portions rather than sharing bags, and eat them sitting down rather than on the move.

If you find it hard to stop once you start with certain foods, it is fine to keep those out of the house for now and have them when you are out instead. That is not failure. It is sensible planning. Some people find it helps to have a treat straight after a meal, a couple of squares of chocolate after dinner for example, rather than on its own when they are hungry.

Snacks around training

If you train after work, a planned snack in the afternoon helps you perform better and stops you arriving home starving afterwards. A banana and a yoghurt, or toast with peanut butter, 60 to 90 minutes before a session is enough for most people. See what to eat before a workout.

With several of Lycan Strength's classes starting at 6pm or 7pm on weekday evenings, as the class timetable shows, that afternoon snack is often the difference between a strong session and a sluggish one.