If you’re active, then you’ll be hungry.  You must be creative and have some good snacks on hand to regularly choose, to tide you over until it’s time for a bigger meal.  Otherwise, when you do eat, you’ll end up overeating.  The following snacks contain between 200-400 calories, are very fast to prepare, and taste good.  Keep this list on hand to give you some ideas for healthy snacks.  Remember, our goals are:
 

• Taking in nutrients we need- protein, carbohydrates & healthy fats.
• Consuming plenty of foods which are high in vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and antioxidants.  
• Moderating caloric intake, and adjusting it according to our activity levels and goals.
• Moderating our intake of simple sugars, unnecessary carbohydrates, and unhealthy fats.  
• Enjoying what we eat.  
• Basing our diets primarily around healthy fruits and vegetables, lean sources of fish, chicken and other proteins, as well as unsaturated sources of fats like nuts and olive oil and slowly digesting carbohydrates like beans and brown rice.

 
Keep in mind that these are snacks that I personally use and I am extremely active.  You may not be very active, and may sit all day at work, so you may need to severely limit your portions sizes on these.  Adjust accordingly.  The key is to have a good battery of things you routinely turn to when you need some nourishment fast, in order to avoid empty calories.  
 
Avoiding Empty Calories is the Name of the Game

So here they are...
My 20 favorite snacks:
 

1. Lowfat greek yogurt with a small handful of nuts.
2. 2 Slices of whole grain bread with almond butter and an apple.
3. Glass of skim milk and a banana with peanut butter.
4. Low fat cottage cheese and grapes.
5. Carrots, celery, and hummus.
6. 1 medium serving of popcorn, sea salt and no butter.
7. ½ - 1 can of tuna with pickles and 4 whole grain crackers.
8. Apple slices and 1 TBSP of peanut butter.  
9. Turkey sandwich with whole grain bread, tomatoes, and mustard.
10. Cold al dente pasta with olives, olive oil, parmesan, and tuna.
11. 1 can of sardines, 2 pickles, and ½ a cup of blackberries.  
12. ½ cup of Sauerkraut, 1 slice of cheese, 1 prune.
13. 1 cup of dry whole grain cereal, a tablespoon of cashews, and a peach.
14. 1 smoothie with whey protein, 1 cup of strawberries, ½ tbsp. of almond butter.
15. ½ of an avocado on 4 whole grain crackers.
16. 1 serving of oatmeal with one boiled egg.
17. Medium salad with dark green lettuce, black beans, olive oil, and sunflower seeds
18. 1 can of low sodium soup or chili.
19. 1 serving of cottage cheese with pecans.
20. 1 green apple and a low-fat piece of swiss cheese.   

 
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* This is part of a year-long series called "52 Weeks to Eating better than Ever". Click on the side bar for more information and to read the previous essays.
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​“There is truth in wine.”- Ancient Proverb
 
“A man may be driven to drink by his depression, and his depression may be made even worse by his drinking.” – George Orwell
 
If you are still reading after seeing the title, then I commend you.  I couldn’t blame you if you turned away.  Who wants to read something bad about alcohol?  Many of our best occasions- a nice meal in a restaurant, holidays, weddings, other celebrations, and even the end of the day- are punctuated by a relaxing glass of wine or a cold beer or cocktail.  I discovered a “Charles Dickens Christmas Punch” a few years ago, involving lots of rum and other spirits, as well as fire and bergamot oil, that makes for one grand and festive holiday party!  I’m not anti-alcohol, because the good outweighs the bad, but just ever so slightly.  Because there’s a huge downside.  
 
I’ve had my own ups and downs with alcohol.  It’s a dangerous substance, and I could go on and on about that.  The binge drinking culture in American colleges, which doesn’t exist in any other country, is suspect as a cultural tradition worth keeping, especially considering the pre-frontal cortex part of the brain (which is responsible for critical thinking and wisdom) of the young adult doesn’t develop until age 25.   
 
For this essay though, I will skip all the DUIs, traffic fatalities, stories of addiction, unwanted pregnancies, depression, bad grades, suicides, fights, arguments, domestic violence, and other items that come to mind when considering the ugly side of alcohol, because my focus here is on your metabolism, your weight, and your overall nutritional health.  In that regard too, beware of alcohol, because in addition to the addiction risks and poor judgement calls, it can wreak havoc on your metabolic, nutritional, and overall health.  
 
Alcohol makes it harder to lose weight, less likely that you will feel like exercising, and more likely that you will overeat.  It can also disrupt the delicate balance of hormones you need to feel great, focus, and be lean.  Let’s go over a few fundamental facts:

• Alcohol is a depressant, meaning it slows things down, mentally and metabolically.  To lose fat and burn calories we want to speed things up, metabolically.  

 

• Drinking a lot of alcohol over time can cause your liver to accumulate fat, which would negatively affect its ability to regulate insulin, making you more insulin resistant.  

 

• The ethanol contained in alcohol causes the samespike in blood glucose and insulin resistanceas other empty calories do.  When you look at alcohol, from now on think of it as a piece of cake- they have a similar effect on your body metabolically.  

 

• Alcohol promotes fat storage, and fat storage makes you more insulin resistant, which makes weight loss harder. 

 

• Alcohol promotes inflammation, which worsens insulin resistance.  

 

• Ethanol, the sugar in alcohol, is toxicto the nerves in your body and your brain.  

 

• Alcohol calories are empty calories, it has no nutritional value, and if your goal is to lose weight, you cannot afford empty calories.  

 
In summary:    

Alcohol =         
> Inflammation 
> Toxicity 
> Empty Calories 
> Insulin Resistance 
> Fat Storage 
> Blood Sugar Levels
 
The keys to lifelong healthy eating and aging are to remain responsive to insulin, to keep inflammation low, moderate calories, and to avoid toxicity.  Alcohol makes all that harder by promoting insulin resistance (fat storage), inflammation, toxicity, and is an empty calorie food.  Sounds like a no brainer what your overall philosophy should be.  But we are human, and we like to do things that are pleasurable, so most of us are still going to drink some, and eat cake and ice cream occasionally.  But it needs to be occasionally.  

Now Let Me Build You Back Up!
 
I’ve beaten you down. I know, I’m no fun.  Again, I am not saying to never drink.  A low to moderate amount of alcohol has been shown to have some health benefits, mainly by improving blood lipid profiles.  Though from the studies I’ve read I think much of the health benefits correlated with alcohol may come from the strong Mediterranean social cultures built around wine drinking- relaxed, slow, family gatherings where wine is shared, and which goes back for generations.  The "truth" of wine is in the multi-generational communities it nourishes.  Red wine especially, because of the antioxidant resveratrol, may be worth having on occasion with friends.  But overall, be careful, for many reasons.  Enjoy moderate amounts of alcohol, but focus more on the social occasions than the drinks themselves.  
 
The Final Verdict 
 
I will end by giving you 3 basic and easy rules:
 

1. If you don’t love it, then just pass altogether.
2. If you are in a weight loss phase, cut it out until you get to your desired weight.
3. If you are happy with your weight, and really enjoy a drink or two, save it for the weekends and focus on the strong social bonds that alcohol can contribute to.  

 
Cheers!
 
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* This is part of a year-long series called "52 Weeks to Eating better than Ever". Click on the side bar for more information and to read the previous essays.
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In another essay, I wrote about how diets “work”, at least in the short term, because they provide a structure and discipline to your eating which is often lacking.  If you get on a low-fat diet and follow that structure and measure what you’re eating, you will lose weight and bodyfat.  If you get on a low-carb diet, the same thing will happen.  You will lose weight and bodyfat.  If you do the Keto diet, then you’ll get results.  The same with Weight Watchers, The Zone, a Vegan diet, and Atkins.  All supposedly different, but all offering one main component that most of us are missing- discipline.
 
There was a famous documentary film made, called “Supersize Me” about a man who ate at McDonald’s for a month and gained a lot of weight by eating all that fast food.  It appears fast food would be the culprit, and it’s true that you can do better than most fast food.  But fast food isn’t the problem, a lack of discipline is.  There were other examples of case studies in which people who ate nothing but fast food and they ended up losing weight, instead of gaining weight, if they managed calories!  The common factor in these cases is discipline and structure. 
 
I’m not saying calories are all that matters.
 
I’m not saying you can eat whatever you want and still be healthy and lean.
 
I’m not saying certain diets aren’t better than others.
 
What I am saying is that diets help you focus.  If you want to lose fat, it’s an all-out war! But wars can’t be fought indefinitely because you will run out of focus and energy.  You only have so much focus and energy in each day.  If you are hyperfocused on food 365 days per year, you may not accomplish much else.  That’s why healthy habits over a lifetime are so important.  You want healthy eating to become automatic.
 
But let’s say you want to lose 20 pounds quickly.  Keeping in mind that you can only lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week at the most, aim for a 30-day period where you write down everything you eat.  Log it in to an online or smartphone tracking application or site.   Do it for 30 days straight.  Use any diet you like and that gives you enough energy to exercise.  I guarantee you that if you track your intake for 30 days’ minimum or preferably a little longer, 45-60 days, you will lose some fat. Shoot for about 20 pounds in 2 months. Then take a step back and relax and try to even out at that weight and evaluate your next move.  
 
Hyperfocus for a time, particularly on fat loss.  It’s not going to come off easy- remember it’s war!  Plan your meals for a whole month.  Block off time to do 30-60 minutes of exercise every day for 30 days and track your food.  You will lose fat if you follow the guidelines of practically any diet.  Two of my favorites are “The South Beach Diet” and Weight Watchers.  Pick your favorite, or try a new one, but to lose some serious fat, hyperfocus for a short time, a month or two and then settle back into healthy habits. Hyperfocusing and cycling through very short periods of intense fat loss can work well.  Just make sure you keep it off. 

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* This is part of a year-long series called "52 Weeks to Eating better than Ever". Click on the side bar for more information and to read the previous essays.
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All diets work.   It could be the “Sugar-Busters”, the “Atkins” or “The Zone.” Some more recent ones I read about and heard about were “The Keto Diet” and “The Wheat Belly Diet.”  Diets come and go and usually come back around every few years.  Why wouldn’t they, consider they make millions for some entrepreneurial writer.  Do they work? 
 
In a short answer, yes, they do.  All diets work.  Which ones? All of them!
 
All diets work, and for that reason, I am not necessarily opposed to using them or recommending them. The major benefit of using one of these fad diets is that they give you some structure and extra motivation. Structure is critically important for most people, because most people lack discipline.  All diets can help you eat less, and thus lose weight and body fat, and so they do work in this sense.  Weight Watchers works for the same reasons- structure and motivation, with the added benefit using points and of allowing you to eat anything you like if you stick to your points.  It’s not really a diet but it’s my favorite.  
 
Just keep this in mind when you go on a diet.  If you don’t change your eating habits in the long-term, things will never change for you. So, go ahead and do a diet.  Jump on the bandwagon if you want to because the bandwagon often works, in the short term.  Just remember that lifelong success requires lifelong change.  Many diets don’t end up working in the long-term, not because the diet was that bad, but because the dieter went back to their old ways of poor nutritional quality and consistent overeating.  
 
Diet or no diet- eat less, eat better, and enjoy eating.    

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