My Favorite Healthy Snacks

For years I've heard people say that if you want to lose weight you shouldn't focus on eating just 3 squares a day. They say you should eat more often and smaller portions. For the longest time I thought this was BS. I mean losing weight is a simple equation. If the calories you consume are less than the calories you burn you lose weight. I didn't think it mattered how the calories were consumed. However, now I have to say I'm a believer.

In my quest to lose weight before our wedding I had been going on along really well until last week. An extended holiday weekend full of eating put the hurt on me. I decided that the week after I was going to make sure I did a lot of exercise and made sure I had healthy snacks in between smaller meals as I've heard recommended so many times. They say this helps boost your metabolism and you'll burn more calories. It worked. I've been having healthy snacks between all my meals this week and lo and behold I lost another 4.4 lbs and I'm down to a weight I haven't been since 2008. The point of all this really isn't to toot my own horn, but I wanted to recommend to you some of the snacks I've been enjoying so you can try them too if you'd like. (pictures of all items forthcoming)

1. Welch's Fruit Snacks
 I know you might think of fruit snacks as something your mom put in your lunch box every day in 2nd grade, but trust me these Welch's fruit snacks are good for kids and adults. Target sells them in value pack boxes that contain 22 individual packs of fruit snacks that are only 80 calories a piece and 0 grams of fat. The texture is soft and chewy without that stick to your teeth or wear out your jaw feel that some fruit snack give you. They are also made from real fruit and the flavors pop quite nicely.

2. Fresh Fruit
No secret here, but one of the things that has really been key for me is keeping our house stocked with fresh fruit. All fresh fruits are 0 WW points so they make a perfect snack. Since we're in the summer months everything is in season and tasting good too. If you like strawberries you can even eat them with fat free whipped cream (just don't go crazy) for a really low cal dessert.

3. Graham Crackers
The regular honey graham crackers you can buy in the store are very low fat and low in WW points. I think 2 whole sheets are less than 3 points. You can also put some fat free Cool Whip in between them and freeze them and it makes a low calorie ice cream sandwich variant.

4. Yogurt
At Kroger (or Krogers if you're from southern Indiana) they have a lot of great flavors of lite yogurt including banana cream pie and key lime which are my favorites. Every cup of lite yogurt is only 100 calories, and Kroger used to sell them for the cheap price of 10 cups for $4. However, the last time we were at the store the price had dropped to 12 for $4.  Also, I recently tried a fat free greek yogurt for the first time and while I don't think it's something I'd eat by itself very often (since it tastes more like a funky cheese than anything sweet) I thought it did make a good dip for berries or veggies.