Healthy Snacks - Low Calorie Snack Foods To Eat When Dieting

I like to eat some sinful foods during special occasions and seem to crave them even more outside of holidays. Although I allow myself to indulge on designated cheat limitations per month or per week I still need to have some backup for the times I cannot control my hankering for something fun.

Rice cakes (I like Lundberg brown rice cakes) can be a fast way to silence a craving without too high a carb or calorie. There are several ways to use this as a treat for sugar or salt type cravings with varying degrees of sin added to them. If you are watching your diet but on a strict regimen one of the nicest ways to eat rice cakes which can satisfy either a salt or sugar craving is to use no fat cream cheese topped with one of these choices:

• Strawberries or other berries such as blueberries, cranberries etc.
• Salt and peppered cucumber slices
• Honey
• Cinnamon and chopped green apple
• Chopped banana coins and dried blueberries, cranberries etc.

Now if you take the above ideas and replace the cream cheese with peanut or almond butter, replace the cucumbers with chopped celery and you have more choices which are healthy. 2-4 rice cakes per sitting should be enough and only once every few days. The lovely crunch of the cake mixed with the textures of the toppings is another satiating effect.

Oats are a secret treat just waiting to happen! These little carb flakes are a high protein carb and help to regulate blood sugar which differs from other carbs in that they usually cause insulin spike to drop.

Oats can replace any flour in baking, pancakes, and even in cooking when required to use bread crumbs or crumbles to top with. You can find oat bran which is finely ground, oat flour or the good old steel cut. Whole oats are a mainstay in my house.

A competitor at a show once had these little tea cake looking things and she would dollop peanut butter on them. She had all of us curious, and drooling! Finally someone could not stand it anymore and piped up asking her about these little cakes. She said she made them just like oatmeal except with much less water, just enough to thicken it and she said there was no protein powder in them but she had added that before too. That was it, just whole oats and water to make a batter like for cookies, and then she spooned them on to a plate and nuked them! Brilliant! You can top these with no fat cream cheese, nut butters, sugar free jams and jellies or compotes, chopped fruits, cottage cheese with or without those fruits or jellies. Can you see a pattern here?

Experiment and see what you like. It’s a great way to calm a craving for sweet or salty yet keeping to the healthy diet foods you are eating. Now take a tsp of carob chips and throw those over 2 oat tea cakes and peanut butter, tell me that does not help a sugar craving. Enjoy!

By Linda Cusmano