Snacks and nibble attacks

To stop your abnormal wish for sweets and overeating, before you feel hunger, eat something healthy.

Nibbling can sometime be useful if you choose proper food. But, if you eat donuts with chocolate, chocolate, cookies, chipsy and coke for your snacks, you are loading yourself with fats and sweets.

Following list may help you choose your snacks at home or outside:

•  Moesli – mix your favourite cereals with raisins, dried fruit, cinnamon, or eat them alone!
• Popcorn – eat alone or use chilli-powder, garlic or onion in powder to spice them, or use soya sauce. If you wish, you can keep some butter to keep spices together
• Salt pretzels – If you avoid salt, remove it or buy the ones without salt
• Crackers – There are integral non-fat crackers(crispy) from various cereals, with sesame or rice crackers
• Muffins – the best ones are home made with low-fat. If you buy them, make sure to look for the ones with very low-fat, possibly integral
• Rolls – Integral rolls give more vitamins and minerals than the ones from white flour
• Fruit – Eat oranges, bananas, apples or any other fresh fruit. When you travel, carry dried fruit too
• Frozen fruit tiles – this can be eaten slowly
• Yoghurt – low calory and non-fat is the best. You can spare a lot if you buy a fresh one(1 litre) and add whatever you want – honey, vanilla, cinnamon, instant coffee, fruit cocktail, apples, bananas, strawberries…
• Sport tiles – packed and easy to carry, these tiles can be kept in pocket, in sports bag…
• Seeds, nougats – peanuts, pistachios, almond, sunflower seeds, other nougats and seeds are excellent source of proteins, B  complex vitamins and E vitamin. They have a lot of (healthy) fat, so maintain a good balance with carbohydrates and snacks
• Dried potatoes – in microwave you can make your imagination work. They are excellent for muscle recovery after the heavy training. Try sweet potatoes after hard training to test the theory

The best fruit

Fruit	Nutrition calculating
Papaya, ½	252
Melon, ¼	213
Strawberries, one cup	186
Orange, 1 medium	169
Tangerine, 2 medium	168
Kiwi, one	154
Mango, ½	153
Watermelon, 2 cups	122
Raspberries, 1 cup	117
Grapefruit, ½	103
Blight, 1/10 melon	81
Marella, one fresh	72
Banana, one	60
Apple with bark	58
Pear, one middle	48
Apple, without bark, one	42
Peach, one medium	39
Raisins, ¼ cup	35
Pear, conserved, 2 halves	16

Non-nibbling can be bad, it can influent bigger hunger degree and overeating. Snacks can help you to eliminate hunger for some period of time and protect you from overeating.

Nibbling attack 1: Cookies overeating before dinner

It mostly happens if person doesn’t eat at all or eats very little during day. It can be sanated with good breakfast and light lunch, because athlete will not feel that big hunger when dinner time comes. For example, if 2800kcal is needed for normal metabolism functioning, breakfast should be around 800kcal, and lunch 100-300kcal. That will leave enough space to prevent cookies overeating.

Nibbling attack 2: Chocolate dependency

“Chocoholics” often skip meals in order to eat chocolate or anything sweet. They don’t look for excuses, eat sweets three or more times per day, and this is dangerous due to sweets don’t contain any minerals or vitamins.

For example, if 2200kcal is normal metabolism, 220kcal in sweets is ok amount – 10% of sweets is ok, but if the person passes that limit, than emergency food(snacks written in the beginning of the thread) will save the day.

Nibbling attack 3: Sugar before exercise

Sugar from sweet drinks and even from fruit juices creates short-term energy growth that later can decrease performance due to hypoglycemia, when training is started.

If you must eat sugar before exercise, eat sugar in 10 minutes after you started to train.

Or eat more calories for lunch or breakfast.

Or you can eat a snack 2-4 hours before training.

Anything is better than sugar 5 minutes before exercising, hypoglycemia will not leave you alone!

Snacks can be the source of healthy energy if they are chosen among the groceries that are rich with polysaccharides, and can be excellent to prevent hunger. Some people must nibble to prevent hunger and they feel better during the whole day. Eat integral rolls and crackers, fruit, yoghurt… all groceries described in the beginning of the thread can be helpful.  

Nibbles, sweets and nibbling attacks – important advices to help you prevent:

• Snacks are important part of sports nutrition, they help versus overhunger. Remember, when you are hungry, if it is not important what you eat, your good intentions can easily finish on fats and sugars.
• Sweets also has space in healthy nutrition. There is nothing bad if you eat cake after lunch. Problem appears if you have only cakes for lunch.
• If you starve for sweets, look have you ate adequate calories that satisfy your activities. It is possible that you overhungered. Wish for sweet often means that you are physiologically hungry.
• Stop wish for sweets by eating more healthy calories for breakfast and lunch in order to satisfy small “glutton”  inside of you that wakes up in the afternoon or in the evening.
• Though carbohydrates can cause hypoglycemia and fatique at some people before training, they give necessary energy to most athletes.
• Sugar during training(100-300 calories per hour) increase performance if you train longer than 60-90 minutes.

"Sports nutrition", Nancy Clark