Snacking can be a healthy habit when it’s done with thoughtfulness, but it’s important to pay attention to and identify your food cravings so you can eat more mindfully. These cravings are usually your body’s way of telling you it’s nutrient-deprived. Instead of reaching for processed foods or grabbing anything that’s available, satisfy your body with the nutrients it’s lacking.
Optimize Your Snacks
Food is fuel for everything, on and off the field. Incorporating nutrient-dense snacks into your lifestyle will help keep your energy levels high. You can get most essential nutrients from greens, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruit, and protein shakes with whey protein isolate or plant based protein.
To stay fuller longer, try combining produce with protein: eat an apple with almond butter or baby carrots with hummus. Pay attention to your intake of essential fats, too. These help you sustain optimal blood glucose levels, which manage the transportation of sugar. By adding essential fats to your diet, you’re ensuring your body has readily accessible energy to perform at optimal levels. Almonds, flaxseeds, oils such as olive and sesame oil, and oily fish such as sardines and salmon are good sources of essential fats.
Quit Junk Food
If you’re used to eating unhealthy snacks, you might crave junk food. Most processed foods contain unhealthy levels of sugar and table salt, along with intentionally added addictive flavorings such as artificial sweeteners. Curb cravings by reducing your intake of these ingredients. How? Think ahead, and stay on top of your snacking. Identify and anticipate situations that may cause you to reach for junk food. Set yourself up for success by carrying a healthy substitute with you – we love snacking on seeds and nuts, veggies with hummus, and fruits, to name a few. That way, you’ll have a healthy alternative on hand when you feel that urge to snack.
Try A Few Of Our Favorite Snacks
A Mixture of Nuts and Seeds
Right now, we love pumpkin and sunflower seeds! They mix well whatever nut blend you prefer.
Hummus and Vegetables
This is a great way to bring some protein into your snacking. We love snacking on red bell peppers, celery, broccoli, and carrots with hummus.
Seasonal Fruit
Fruit is always a great healthy snack, and we love picking fruit that's in season whenever possible.
Scrambled Eggs with Spinach and Peppers
Eggs are a snacking staple! We like ours scrambled and love adding veggies like peppers, spinach, and onions whenever possible.
Organic Grass Fed Yogurt
We like to enhance yogurt by adding berries and chia seeds for extra nutrients.
LET'S GO
- Nutrient-dense snacks: Eat healthy snacks with plenty of nutrients, especially essential fats and protein, to keep your energy levels up.
- Cut out processed foods: Reduce junk food cravings by avoiding the high levels of sugar, table salt, and artificial flavoring in processed foods.
- Pack healthy options: Carry healthy snacks with you to satisfy your cravings the right way.
- Snacking is inevitable, but it doesn’t need to be a bad thing.
In his book, The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance, Tom Brady writes,
“Try to snack throughout the day. It curbs your appetite, helps you retain energy, and lowers your chance of overeating during meals.”
To do it right, learn to recognize which healthy, nutrient-rich snacks fuel your body rather than weigh it down, and bring your snacks with you to stay ahead of cravings. Be prepared and don’t let anything get in the way of achieving your sustained peak performance.
