How can you afford to lose the extra weight when everything on the diet food aisle in the grocery store is so pricey?  Easy answer.  Skip the diet food aisle.

A trip down that section of most stores will reveal a collection of expensive items that won’t really help you in the long run.  For example — goodies in individual 100 calorie packets.  Those never worked for me, because I found I was as capable of opening two or three packets as opening one.  Then I felt ashamed of pigging out on “diet food” and had to bury the evidence and take out the trash. Besides, if you feed your body sugar and carbs, it will crave more sugar and carbs.  Those little packets just whet your appetite for more of what you shouldn’t have.

There are some merits to the idea of single serving snacks, though, and many people find them helpful. If you are one of those folks, here is a budget-friendly alternative.  Buy   the snack-sized plastic bags, or find some small, reusable bowls with lids.  (They make them for leftovers or for carrying baby snacks.) Fill them with single serving portions of the food you plan to use as a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack.  READ THE NUTRITION INFO ON THE FOOD YOU PUT IN THEM.  That’s important because most folks severely underestimate the size of a portion and chow down on an excessive number of calories.

Make sure you choose low-glycemic snacks.  Put a serving of nuts in your snack bag, or a serving of raisins or other dried fruit.  Look over the green, low-glycemic list and pick out foods that look good to you and use those for snacks.

It’s true that you crave what you have been used to eating.  If you get in the habit of eating a few almonds every mid-morning at break time, you will start yearning for your almonds instead of lusting after that bagel.

Eat your snack slowly, and savor the flavor.  Make it a game with yourself to see how long you can make your snack last.  You’ll find that you enjoy that small, inexpensive baggie of raisins more than the high glycemic cookies you shoved in your mouth and swallowed without bothering to taste.  Really!

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown