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.

It's been almost a year..../Weight Watchers Ice Cream Candybar Review

Honestly, I have no idea if anyone ever still comes by here and checks in from time to time. I certainly wouldn't blame them for not doing so. It's been almost a year to the day since I wrote my last blog. I'm not sure why I took such a long hiatus. I think it was a combination of a lot of factors. For one the blog started to become a lot more like work than fun. While it gave us a good reason to seek out new places sometimes it felt like a chore to find a place just for blog purposes and then upload the pictures and write it up. I decided that if it stopped being fun I would stop doing it. Also, a great many things have changed in my life in the last year. For one I got engaged. (Henceforth The Girlfriend will be referred to as The Fiance...at least until Oct 19th...ps we're registered at Target and Macy's.) I bought a house. And most importantly in how it relates to having a food blog I started on Weight Watchers and I have lost over 40 lbs.  If you've read some of my posts you probably realize that this was not a blog about eating healthy. Far from it. This is a blog mostly about decadent and delicious restaurant food.  I've been thinking about restarting this blog thing, but how do I square it with my new lifestyle? We're not eating out nearly as much, and when we do I rarely indulge like I used to. I'm just not sure the things I've been eating lately would be that interesting to read about, and I'm very hesitant to make this into a blog about eating healthy or my diet progress.  If anyone reads this please post some feedback. As for right now I think I am going to be blogging again with just whatever food related ideas or reviews suit me. Stay tuned.

Oh while we're at it let's go ahead and do a quick review. While I've been losing weight like most people I've still got a desire to have sweet things now and again. Most of the time when those cravings hit I try to make myself have some fruit, but when it's Summer you just have to find a way to have some ice cream. Unfortunately, most ice cream is pretty terrible for you calorie wise, and it's not worth it to me to blow a good day eating right and exercising to have a little bit of ice cream. Fortunately, there are actually some good products out there in the grocery store freezer that don't make you sacrifice. My current favorite right now is the Weight Watchers Ice Cream Candybar. Yes, I was skeptical of these types of products at first too, but once I ate one I was a believer. It's only 4 points plus on Weight Watchers (read: not very much) and it tastes exactly like a Snickers Ice Cream bar. It's even a good satisfying size so you don't feel like you're getting ripped off. Prices on stuff like this are always going to be a little higher, but prices on ice cream novelties in general are high so it's not much of a difference.

Rating 8/10

P.S. I'm currently thinking of revising my whole rating system to something more general or maybe eliminating it entirely and just giving opinion in the post itself. If you have any feedback let me know in the comments.