Apr
20
Snacking at work; good or bad?
Filed Under Eating Healthy
We’ve been talking about being healthy at work over the past week. We’ve covered a few ways to stay physically active as well as healthy eating habits for lunchtime. Today we’re going to talk about one of the worst, and possibly best, things you can do for your health while at work, snacking.
The Problem
For most people, snacking is a problem. Even worse, it’s a problem they’re not aware of. Offices have a lot of snack sources and it’s hard to avoid them all. There’s the morning bagels, the afternoon leftovers from the sales meeting and that jar full of chocolates on your coworkers desk. Where ever you turn, there are snacks, and most of them are bad for you.
When people look at their daily food consumption, they rarely remember to add in the snacks. But these little additions to our calorie intake can add up to quite a bit. If you expect to get healthy, you can’t go around adding extra stuff to your diet without considering it. So let’s look at some of these snacks in greater detail.
Bagels - Did you already have breakfast that day? If yes, then why are you adding another bagel to it? Bagels can have hundreds of calories in them even without the cream cheese. Plus those calories have ZERO nutritional value. Just have a healthy breakfast and avoid the bagels.
Leftovers - Same thing. Did you not have lunch or are you not planning to have lunch? Stick to your own food. No need to add someone else’s leftovers to it.
Chocolates - Ah chocolate, my kryptonite. I’m going to be a bit of a hypocrite and tell you that you should avoid the office candy jar, but I have issues of my own with this one. It’s the one bad habit I’ve been unable to break. So do as I say on this one and not as I do and stay away from the candy jar.
Soda - Here’s another bad example of snacks most people forget about. The average office worker drinks two or three cans of soda or juice a day. Many offices even give these out for free. This translates to about 400 to 500 calories a day of completely empty calories. You get no nutritional value out of these. All you get is a caffeine addiction and some sugar. Drink water, it’s cheaper and healthier.
Can you see a trend here? Yes, in general, all snacks are bad for you. So why does my heading say that snacks can be good? Well, because they can be, but then they stop being snacks. What I mean is, your eating habits should consist of more than just breakfast, lunch and dinner. Ideally, you should eat 5 or 6 small meals a day. However, for most working people that’s pretty much impossible. So rather than waste your time and tell you about things you can’t do, I’m going to give you a little tip you can easily implement in your day to day life.
Good Snacks
Assuming you’re like most people and have lunch at about noon and then dinner at around 7 or 8pm, that leaves 7 to 8 hours in which you’re not eating. That’s actually bad for you. It lets your metabolism wind down to a low level. You burn less calories and you end up feeling tired in the afternoon. That’s because your body has no energy with which to fuel itself. This is where snacking comes in. Right around 3:30 or so, try to have a healthy snack. This could be any number of things:
- An egg or even two.
- A piece of whole wheat bread with some vegetables and cheese
- Some rice
- A bowl of soup
- A salad
Whatever it is, you’re aiming for about 1/6 of your daily calories. That’s around 300 to 400 for most women and 350 to 450 for most men. Again, your numbers may vary based on your size and daily activities. By the way, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while now you’ll notice a pattern:
- 1/6 of your calories for breakfast
- 1/3 of your calories for lunch
- 1/6 of your calories for an afternoon snack
- which leaves 1/3 of your calories for dinner.
If you can get that to be your daily routine, you’ll have a very healthy eating plan.
Now if all else fails and you really feel hungry between these times, then find a healthy snack and eat it. This snack should minimize calories and maximize nutrition. That pretty much means a fruit or a vegetable. I keep a box of those small mandarin oranges by my desk. They’re just the right size to get over a momentary craving. I’ve seen other people with a bag of carrots, or an apple. I’ve even seen someone popping cherry tomatoes like they were grapes. Whatever it is, keep in mind that snacking is not free calories. It’s something you need to be aware of and control. Otherwise, you’re just going to ruin all the hard work you’re putting into the rest of your day.
Summary
So there it is, the healthy work day described over the course of one week. I hope you’ve found this information useful. I’ll be back on Sunday for the weekly round up and then on Monday with my new series “Having fun and being active” that will cover some fun activities you can do to increase your activity levels.
Until then, have a good weekend.
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