Mar

28

Reader Q&A - Are Peanuts Healthy?

Filed Under Eating Healthy, Snacks | Leave a Comment

This question comes in from TR in Florida.  TR wants to know if peanuts are a healthy snack option.

The Upside of Peanuts

Peanuts can be an excellent snack.  They contain healthy fats as well as a good amount of fiber and protein.  A small amount of peanuts can actually fill you up for a considerable amount of time.

The Downside of Peanuts

Although they are healthy, peanuts do pack a good amount of calories in for their small size.  A single cup of peanuts can have around 900 calories in it.  That’s almost 2 big macs!

The Healthy Way To Eat Peanuts

  • Moderation is key - Try to eat less than 30 peanuts in a single sittin.  That’s 30 individual peanuts, not 30 shells which can each contain 2 to 3 peanuts.
  • Eat the raw varieties - I’m not a raw food fanatic, but in the case of peanuts, raw is better.  Roasted is not too bad but definitely stay away from salted and glazed varieties.
  • Get them in the shell - Why in the shell?  Because shelling the peanuts yourself will force you to eat slower and that will fill you up before you eat too many of them.  It will also make you more aware of how many you’re eating.

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Yes TR, peanuts are an excellent snack option.  Just snack in moderation and try to stay away from peanuts that have been overly prepared or processed.

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Dec

12

Stop Snacking With the Inconvenience Factor

Filed Under Healthy Habits, Motivation, Snacks | 1 Comment

One of the worst problems I had with my eating habits was my snacking. I love food. I enjoy eating it even when I’m not hungry. So I would find myself snacking all through the day. Anytime I needed something to do I would find food and eat it. Over time, I realized that this habit is one of the worst parts of my diet. It was quite literally the difference between getting to the weight I wanted to be at or staying at the weight I was. The only problem was, I wasn’t quite sure how to stop.

No matter how many times I told myself that “from now on, things will be different” I would always find myself dipping into that chocolate jar or taking things from the cookie tray. I knew it was bad, I even realized that as I was eating the snack but that didn’t make me stop. So, since will power alone seemed unreliable, I decided to do something else. What I came up with is the Inconvenience Factor. Simply put, I snacked because it was convenient. So if I wanted to stop snacking, I had to make it less convenient. These are the things I came up with:

Never Carry Cash

Cash makes snacking easier because it makes snacks easier to purchase. Less cash means less snacks. That means I carry less cash in my wallet, I don’t carry change with me, the cash I do carry is in $20 bills and I leave my wallet in my desk drawer at work. This way, if I pass by the vending machine or some street vendor, it’s going to be difficult for me to buy anything.

Don’t Buy Snacks At the Supermarket

I don’t care how much will power you think you have, if you have a snacking problem, you shouldn’t be buying things you’ll snack on. That means no buying large bags of potato chips, no buying packages of candy and no buying premade, no cooking required food. You’ll tell yourself that you won’t snack but you will. Leave that stuff in the supermarket.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

If you do end up buying something, keep it somewhere inconvenient. Putting your potato chips in the highest cabinet you have behind some dishes is a great idea. Believe me, you’re going to need to be really hungry before you go for those chips. Do not put snacks in plain sight. Just seeing snacks can sometimes trigger the urge to eat them.

Buy Raw

This means your food should require as much preparation as possible. The more preparation your food needs the less likely you are to snack on it. It’s real easy to snack on some premade meal you just need to pop into the microwave. It’s a lot harder to snack on raw ingredients you need to prepare.

Stay Away From The Snack Trays

Parties are difficult for me. Everyone always lays out bowls of chips, plates of cookies and trays of finger foods. Best way to avoid eating them is to literally avoid being near them. Go to other side of the room, pick a table away from the buffet or just move to a different room. Do whatever you can to avoid being near the food.

Ask Your Friends For Help

Don’t be shy. In many cases, your friends think going to the supermarket to get a bag of chips every time you come over to play video games is annoying. They might just be glad to hear you’d rather do away with the chips altogether. Same goes for family. Let mom know that you love her food and would much rather save room for the dinner she made than munch away at some cookies she bought at the supermarket. It’s a great way of saying “thanks, but no thanks” to snacks.

The Five Minute Rule

If you can, use the five minute rule. That means every time you have an urge to snack, move away and spend at least five minutes before coming back. If you still want that snack, then maybe you really are hungry. However, in most cases you’ll find that you forget all about that snack in five minutes.

Reward Yourself

Don’t be shy, you’re doing a great job when you avoid snacks and there’s no reason not to reward yourself. Now don’t go overboard but do make sure to positively reinforce your good days. I used to allow myself to buy an iTunes song every day that I went without snacking. At 99 cents a song, I thought it was a bargain compared to the 2 or 3 dollars a day I would spend on snacks, not to mention the extra calories I didn’t need.

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Eating between meals is not necessarily a bad thing. If you’re hungry, eat something. Just make sure you’re eating because you’re hungry and not because there’s food in front of you. If you’re the type of person who eats whenever food is conveniently close by, then maybe you should try to make that food a bit less convenient.

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Sep

20

Eating Healthy 7-11 Fast Food

Filed Under Eating Healthy, Nutrition, Snacks | 2 Comments

For those of you who aren’t aware of it, 7-11 is an American phenomena.  It’s a chain of small convenience stores that are open 24 hours a day.  It’s gotten a reputation for being somewhat less than healthy.  In fact, 7-11’s are the model for the Quickie Mart stores you see in the Simpsons.  With its slushies, hot dogs, donuts and beer, 7-11 is not exactly the place to find the latest in healthy organic produce.  So why write about it in a health blog?  Well, because 60 in 3 is about the real world, not the ideal health world.

In the ideal health world, every neighborhood corner has an organic market or a health food restaurant that’s open 24 hours a day.  In the ideal health world, you never get cravings at 1am for Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream.  Unfortunately, this is not the ideal health world, this is the real world.  In the real world, you do sometimes get cravings at odd hours and in the real world, 7-11 style places are the only ones that might be open.  So is it possible to eat healthy at a place like 7-11?

And the answer is…

Well, maybe.  Ok, let’s put it this way, it’s very difficult to eat healthy at a place that offers almost no healthy options, but it is possible to minimize the damage.  First, a few things to watch out for:

  • Impulse purchases - Any convenience store will set up impulse buys near the counter.  These are little items that you didn’t even think about when you came into the store but look tempting enough to buy on impulse.  They can include cookies, donuts, hot dogs, candy bars and so on.  Avoid these.  It’s the store’s way of trying to make more money at the expense of your waist line.
  • 7-11 Sodas - Ahh yes, the big gulp and the super big gulp.  these drinks can go as high as 64 oz in a single serving.  Quick math.  A typical 8oz can of soda contains 140 calories from refined sugars.  So one of these super big gulps is a whopping 1120 calories of nutritionally empty foods.  That’s more calories than your average dinner.  The slurpees or just as bad by the way.
  • Warm food - 7-11 does serve warm foods.  They’re usually the junk kind of snacks like nachos covered in cheese and hot dogs.  None of them is particularly healthy and most sit outside on the food warmer for hours before you finally eat them.

I thought you said maybe!

Yep, I did say maybe and I meant it.  There are some things that aren’t quite bad at a 7-11.

  • Some Sandwiches - Most convenience stores will offer some sandwich selection.  Go for something on whole wheat.  It’s not a healthy option but it’s better than a hotdog and a donut.
  • Fruit - After a bit of pressure from various consumer bodies, 7-11 and other convenience stores now offer fruit.  So pick up some late at night and eat it.  This is by far the healthiest item you can get at a store like this.
  • Jerky - Not something a vegetarian would appreciate, but on the grand scheme of things, beef jerky is not as bad as most other things in the store.  As a bonus, jerky takes a while to eat due to its texture which means you eat slower and feel fuller.
  • Frozen food - Most stores like this will have a frozen food section.  It might be worth hunting through it for something good.  Note that these sections will have A LOT of junk.  So don’t be tempted by the first package of pizza pockets you find.

Summary

7-11 and other stores like it are not and probably never will be a healthy alternative for food.  However, with just a little bit of effort and willpower, you can minimize the damage and come out with your craving satisfied.

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Jul

20

10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #2, cut out those junk snacks

Filed Under Eating Healthy, Snacks | 5 Comments

Thisentryis part 3 of 11 in the series SERIES - 10 steps to getting fit and losing weight

One of my readers asked for a list of 10 steps to good health. I provided it, but now I want to break each of these items down and give you more useful details. So here’s step 2, cutting out the junk snacks.

My first month after my realization that I needed to get back in shape went something like this:

  1. Walk 30 minutes
  2. Get on scale
  3. Be disappointed that my weight didn’t change
  4. Get frustrated
  5. Consider quitting the whole thing

Sound familiar? A lot of people go through it when they first start getting back in shape. We do one little thing and expect it to have an immediate and noticeable affect. I shared this feeling with a friend who was a physical trainer. She gently explained to me that walking is great, but I may also want to look at what I was eating as well. I had no clue what she was talking about. I mean, my diet was healthy. I knew it was healthy because there was no way it could be otherwise. I didn’t go to fast food places that often so how could my diet be bad? This is another problem for beginners, a sense of denial about our bad habits.

The sad truth

She very politely suggested that I keep a food journal for a week and see what I learn from it, which I did. The end of the week was an incredible eye opener for me. My meals were in fact ok. I did eat a bit too much at lunch but I made up for it by eating almost nothing at breakfast and dinner. Not exactly the healthiest pattern but if you added up the calories from meals alone, I was eating around 2500 calories a day. Not too bad although a little high for someone who didn’t exercise at all. The problem was snacks. More specifically, the problem was junk snacks. From candy bars and ice cream to microwaved pizza pockets and convenience store burritos, I was snacking on junk all through the day. When we added up the calorie totals from these snacks, they were an additional 2000 calories a day. All together, I was eating 4500 calories a day, and that’s not even include the sodas I was drinking.

Sounds unrealistic? Well, a single small container of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream can have 800 to 900 calories in it. Add a couple of candy bars, a small 7-11 burrito and a bag of chips and you’re easily at 2000 calories. That’s 2000 calories of crap. It has almost zero nutritional value and it wasn’t coming instead of my meals, it was coming in addition to my meals.

Cutting out the junk

So I knew I had to get rid of this bad habit, but I didn’t quite know how. I loved snacking and I loved the snacks, so how was I going to get rid of them? Well, my plan involved several parts, each of which was implemented gradually and slowly. By the way, this is where I adopted the philosophy of slow and gradual is better than fast and sudden. I figured that cutting out the snacks all at once would never work, I just didn’t have the willpower. If you do, then that’s great for you, but those of us who have struggled for years with overeating know how difficult it is to walk by a fridge and ignore its calling. So yes, slow and steady was the plan.

Basically, I started either cutting out the unhealthy snacks completely, or replacing them with a healthy snack in the form of a piece of fruit. By the way, fruit is not the only options here, there are a variety of healthy snacks you can eat that are under 100 calories, but I chose fruit because I enjoyed it the most. I needed something I really liked in order to not feel the craving for the unhealthy snacks. If you can do the same thing with vegetables, a small handful of nuts or some other small and healthy snack then by all means, enjoy.

You’ll note that I kept one unhealthy snack as a part of my diet. That usually means a candy bar of some kind. Yes, I realize they’re bad for me but I like them too much to give them up completely. So I adjust my diet accordingly and make sure I don’t overindulge. That’s another lesson I learned from all this, it’s ok to have some bad habits, as long as you are aware of them and adjust your behavior accordingly. Don’t ignore your bad habits, that won’t make them go away. Instead, you need to recognize them and find a way to work around them or compensate for them if you can’t eliminate them completely. By recognizing the fact that I enjoy an occasional piece of candy, I can use it as a reward to myself. I’ve taken a bad habit and turned it into something acceptable, if still not good.

Plan Details

  • Starting Point - 5 unhealthy snacks a day. About 2000 calories a day.
  • 1 to 3 months - 4 unhealthy snacks a day and 1 piece of fruit. About 1700 calories a day.
  • 4 to 6 months - 3 unhealthy snacks a day and 1 piece of fruit. About 1300 calories a day.
  • 7 to 9 months - 2 unhealthy snacks a day and 2 piece of fruit. About 1000 calories a day.
  • 10 to 12 months - 1 unhealthy snack a day and 2 pieces of fruit. About 600 calories a day.

Summary

So a year after I started, I had cut out 1400 calories a day from my daily intake. Not too bad. The best part about this was my realization that slow and gradual changes meant I barely even noticed them. I stopped getting on the scale every morning and expecting to see some kind of magical weightloss has taken place overnight. Instead, I simply settled in for the long haul. I realized that this was something I was committing to for the rest of my life and if so, then I could live with smaller results as long as they kept on coming.

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