How to Control Your Snacking

The urge to snack strikes dieters and non-dieters alike, but for anyone who is watching his weight, that urge can feel overwhelming. More satisfying meals, portion-controlled snacks, and limited access to second helpings of snack foods keeps weight in line. Controlling snacking does not necessarily mean eliminating snacks; planned snacks may actually help with weight loss, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Things You'll Need

• Food journal
• Food scale
• Calorie counter

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Instructions

Assessing Snacking Behavior

• 1

  Munching while watching is a common snack habit.

  Identify when and why snacking occurs without making any other dietary changes at first. Understand what triggers the desire to snack. Common trigger behaviors or emotions include boredom, television-watching, stress, habit and hunger.

• 2

  Record the type of snack along with the feeling or behavior that preceded the urge to eat. A study published in the August, 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that simply keeping a food journal improved dieters' weight loss over time, so this step alone may help curb unconscious snacking behaviors enough to make a difference.

• 3

  Measure snacks on a food scale without trying to reduce the typical amount consumed. Knowing how much a usual serving of a snack is will help establish a baseline for reducing portion sizes when it is time to modify snacking behaviors.

• 4

  Use a calorie counter, either in book form or in an electronic format, to determine the number of calories that a typical day's snacking contains. As with weighing typical portions, counting calories without attempting to reduce them sets a useful baseline for understanding how to change snacks.

Controlling Snacking Behavior

• 5

  Read the food journal and note how many times snacking occurred from genuine hunger. If this happened frequently, increase meal volume with bulky, low-calorie foods such as vegetables and fruits. Eliminating between-meal hunger by increasing meal size will result in more controlled snacking.

• 6

  Develop other behaviors to deal with boredom. If the journal contained many instances of boredom-related snacking, try going for a walk, cleaning the house or indulging in a favorite hobby when the urge to snack from boredom strikes.

• 7

  Make calorie-dense snack foods less readily accessible or avoid bringing them into the house altogether. Potato chips at the grocery store are less of a temptation to snack on than potato chips in the kitchen cupboard.

• 8

  Weigh a single portion of the snack on the food scale and place it on a plate before eating rather than consuming food directly from the package. Wrap the remainder of the food in its packaging and set it out of sight. It is easier to overeat foods from larger packages than to make two trips into the kitchen to refill a plate with snacks.

• 9

  Make lower-calorie snacks easy to reach for and consume. Having easy access to fruits and raw vegetables makes these foods more appealing snack choices and helps control the desire to snack on less healthful foods.