Waiting for the next meal to come could feel like eternity for the insatiable ones. So you indulge in snacks, big enough to satisfy your raging hunger, small enough for you to finish the next meal.

But for those who desire to lose weight, snacks, or in-between meals, present a roadblock.  Today, when supermarkets sell everything in super-sizes, snacks can be titanic detriments to your overall health.

Sometimes, it is less the snack than the size of it. You could be eating one portion when you really are eating four. It doesn’t help too that many consumers choose snacks with empty calories, like junk food.

Of course, you would want snacks with enough calories to sate hunger and nourish your health. You would want 100-calorie snack foods.

100-calorie snacks and how to prepare them

So experts have agreed that you could have your in-between fill, but kept to a minimum, preferably 100 calories or less. It would fill you up, making you just a little less hungry for the next meal. That’s good news for your diet.

Contrive not only to eat 100 calories of your favorite snack, but also choose something with some protein, fiber and carbohydrate. Ideally, your 100-calorie snack must also contain no more than 30 percent fat and little sugar.

To prepare this kind of snack would require not a great deal of counting, weighing and measuring. Get a calorie-counting guide and handy weighing scales. As you get used to your new snack habit, you would become more familiar with how big your snack should look like, and eventually keep the scales.

Without the convenience of scales, and you’re eating outside, make use of your hands and digits. One tablespoon is usually as big as your thumb’s last digit; three ounces of something is usually the size of the palm. An ounce of a lengthy food, e.g. string cheese, represents one forefinger.

Remember that restaurants and fastfoods often serve big portions as single ones. And more often than not, vending machines display snacks worth beyond 100 calories.

Best healthy snacks

There is no debate that fruit remains the perfect snack. Sweet without much sugar, fruits offer no more than 100 calories. Otherwise, here are 13 suggestions for your next 100-calorie snack:

  1. mixed raw vegetables with 1/4 cup zero-fat dressing
  2. 5 ounces tossed salad with 1/4 cup zero-fat dressing
  3. lean roast beef, 2 ounces
  4. 6 thin wheat crackers with 2 teaspoons peanut butter
  5. 2 large graham crackers with 1 teaspoon peanut butter
  6. 3 whole wheat crackers with 3 ounces low-fat cottage cheese
  7. 10 almonds
  8. 10 cashew nuts
  9. low-fat yogurt, 6 ounces
  10. 1 small baked potato with 2 tablespoons zero-fat sour cream and 1/2 cup salsa
  11. unbuttered popcorn with herb seasonings, 3 handfuls
  12. 3 ounces whole grain noodles with 1/2 ounce cheese and 1 tomato
  13. 4 small rice cakes with 2 tablespoons low-fat cottage cheese

Inner cookie monster

Your inner Cookie Monster could be so untamable, but you can indulge it for the most part. It’s okay to gorge on cookies and chips so long as you don’t empty out an entire box in a day.

There are food companies which have carried some of your burden in keeping track of snack calories. They now offer 100-calorie packs of snacks with every pack contains only around 3 grams fat and 7 to 9 grams sugar, and no trans fat.

Some sectors in society were quick to praise these companies for their foresight. Even so, these snacks are not the most nutritious. They are still cookies, which by their nature mean they contain at least two teaspoons of sugar in one pack. Eat them twice a day and do the math.

Nutritionists, on the other hand, have a sticking point about these products’ ingredients. These snacks apparently contain high-fructose corn syrup, believed by some researchers to cause obesity. Experts have noted how high-fructose corn syrup appears to have different properties from glucose. In other words, just imagine what something greater than table sugar could do to your health.

Moreover, expect to cough up more money for your newfound healthy lifestyle. Hundred-calorie snacks can be more expensive than ordinary ones. Also, be prepared to give up some of what you love about the regular products. For instance, 100-calorie packs of Oreo have no white filling.

Then again, this is a way better deal than eating no cookies at all.

If you want to cut out snacking effectively, please check this out!

Similar Posts: