Quick Snack Foods - Eating Healthy Snacks Helps Boost Metabolism

Snacks are a very important part of good nutrition. A perfectly timed, well rounded snack can sustain you until your next meal and this small snack can also help increase your metabolism. When you eat smaller meals along with small snacks, say 4-6 meals with two snacks, you keep your system moving and an increase in your metabolism is a side effect to this planned way of eating.

Now, when I say snacks are important, the actual types of snacks are just as important. Your snacks should be thought out and planned. If you grab at just anything for a snack, you risk choosing the wrong thing and overeating. Even a healthy snack can turn into a bad choice when you eat more than a small portion. The caloric amount of each snack is an individual thing based on your fitness goals, activity level, weight, muscle mass, and so on.

For this article I will give a rough estimate of a 150-250 calorie range for your snacks. Now, if you eat a cookie or some chips then this 150-250 calorie amount doesn't add up to much. It is important to choose snacks that are full of good fats, fiber, and some lean protein. If you create your snacks based on clean foods you can get quite a bit out of this number.

Here are a few examples of different snacks with their calorie and nutritional values.

So you see with these four examples of snacks above that none were under 200 calories. A snack of 150 calories is possible but the snacks that are more complete and that offer you more nutritional value are of course higher in calories. Don't worry about the added calories. These foods are ones that help your system run more smoothly and have many added benefits aside from the nutritionally dense calories.

If you are eating clean, drinking water, and participating in a challenging exercise program then you don't need to calorie count. If you ever find yourself tired, you may want to take a few days and add up your daily caloric intake. It is not uncommon to be way under what you should be eating when you are eating a clean diet. You would be surprised how much volume of food you would accumulate if you follow a diet loaded with clean foods.

As a final note, choose foods and snacks that are low on the glycemic index list. These foods, especially the grains on the list are full of fiber, and offer so many levels of goodness. I believe we spend too much time calorie counting. If you are eating clean then there is no need to calorie count. I have not calorie counted for years and I am going on forty and I'm the leanest I have ever been in my life. Just make sure your snacks are loaded with natural ingredients, good fats and high fiber. Also, make food selections that are low on the glycemic index. This one change may produce a change in your health and fitness that you never thought possible!

By Diane Mohlman