The Case Against Snacking
 

I am very pleased to have broken a recent stall and gone down 3 pounds. Some of it was Carb Creep; if I'm serious about losing more pounds, I am going to do better with 22 daily carbs instead of 32; no question. But I changed something else at the same time. I also wonder if it was due to eating only two meals a day. This made me less hungry... and I found myself dropping carbs without effort.

I have been reading about Intermittent Fasting, and have been successfully skipping breakfast for several weeks now. I realized I had never been a fan of eating first thing in the morning; worse yet, it seemed to increase my hunger. But that alone didn't seem to do anything; the dramatic results might have come from dropping my carbs, certainly, but I'm also NOT SNACKING.

Now, I always loved the way Dr. Atkins, in his books, always said "If you're hungry, eat!" What a wonderful thing to hear when we are trying to lose weight! But I read about a new study that led me to tweak my approach: this blog post by Martin Berkhan, of leangains.com, just published January 3rd, 2011:



It is a shame they didn't compare the 35% carbs for both 3 meal and 6 meal frequency, but the numbers are stark enough; two and a half times the BG values, for identical meals, between the 6 meal a day folks and the 3 meal a day folks. And it was the 3 meal a day people, at 35% carbohydrate, that had the lowest BG values.

I read about folks here on the forum who get stuck; their carbs are low, no Frankenfoods, do some exercise, watch their portions... and they are still stalled. But when menus are posted, so often I see: snack... sometimes several times.

I understand it because it's important to learn to eat only until we are sated. It's important not to feel deprived or hungry. I can sure attest that it's important to have low carb treats!

By skipping breakfast, I was hungry at lunch; and I ate a good lunch. If I wanted a snack or a treat... I ate it then.

This let me coast many hours to dinner time; where, if I was budgeted for dessert and wanted one, I had one. With my meal.

Then, I'm done.

I think this does two things. First of all, a good satisfying meal is there for the insulin to work on. And when the insulin winds down, it stays down... I'm not goosing it into action again by a snack. Because my pancreas doesn't know it's a snack... it might dump a bunch of insulin. What if it's taking care of the snack... then mops up my blood sugar... and lowers it so much it makes me hungry?

So, for what it's worth, I thought I'd share my thoughts. If you:

• Snack between meals because of hunger
• Graze throughout the day
• Try to leave the table "a little bit hungry"

You might be stuck with OLD thinking and BAD advice. One of the benefits of lowcarbing was my freedom from food for hours and hours.

Now I'm just extending those benefits. :)

I stopped snacking when I re-upped in May 2009. There's probably 300-400 calories gone right there. In addition, hunger (for me) is under control. I made a pact with myself if I was hungry, I'd eat a MEAL, NOT a snack. IT worked perfectly.

Lately I've found myself snacking and crazy hungry. Thru MY PLAN, I can see exactly where the extra 300-400 calories are coming from (those same 300-400 calories that were eliminated during hard core weight loss). I'm axing the snacks and going back to what go me to goal. If I'm hungry eat a MEAL.

Progress not perfection.

Lisa

And I just broke a stall by moving away from 3 meals to 4 or 5. I hate frequent meals. But it seems my body handles smaller amounts, more frequently, better. They are not random snacks, but regular and planned.

It seems that meal timing is another important tool that we have to figure out. I resisted smaller frequent meals for YEARS because it sounds so dumb and 70s bodybuilding-ish.

The blog post said that insulin was not affected by meal frequency, but that blood sugar was.

And the time period was every 4 hours for three meals.
Every 4 hours is kind of close together for most 3-meal plans.

3 meals, if I get all my nutrients in there, the meals are big enough, and my metabolism is small enough, that some of the food just sits there and gets stored instead of getting used! That's how I picture it anyway. And the food choices are JK ish, not the yucky low fat food lists of the past.

What you are doing is kind of my sweet spot.

I tried IF when I started out, and it wasn't for me. I was tooooo hungry. I tried it again about a week before Christmas up until a week ago. I was eating at dinner time and that was it other than my decaf iced coffee in the morning. I wasn't hungry hungry, but felt really snacky and I was maintaining at the upper end of my normal. On the weekends where I would eat 2 meals, I'd drop back down. It took a little bit for me to see the pattern, but what it boiled down to is me going back to 2 meals a day. Either breakfast and dinner, or if no time for a full morning meal (eggs and the works) then lunch and dinner. It worked out better for me.

That's the beauty of tracking your intake, weight, and patterns. It's easy to spot things that you might otherwise not consider. You become much more aware of what works for you, and in tune with what your needs are and how you function at your best.

Glad you finally busted out of your stall! :)

Hey, whatever works! Congrats!

As professional repeat Atkins participant (read as: I have been on Atkins several times) I know that around month 3 my ultra-fast and steady weight loss will dwindle down until it officially becomes a stall. I have tried to break out of it with increased exercise, eating smaller more frequent meals, going back into the strictest of induction, eating more, eating less and even taking thermogenics. Nothing has ever really worked except to wait it out. But it never occurred to me to eat less often or cut out snacks. As soon as my weight loss slows down (and it will) I will definitely give it a shot.

Snacking just makes me more hungry.

ever since i started eating more coconut oil in the morning I have noticed way less hunger and it is helping to ease me into 2 meals a day.
I did this Friday and Saturday... but Sunday I ate breakfast and even though i was okay for several hours, i got hungry for lunch and later... dinner.

I have since stopped packing snack foods for my daily menus and i am finding that im not getting hungry in the afternoon.
Today i skipped Bfast and just had coconut oil in coffee and felt just fine by lunch.

i like the idea of not snacking. i want to be free of hunger and i want to stop having to prepare so much dang food every week to make sure im satisfied. this also becomes a money saver big time!

Snacking seemed to come into vogue with the low-fat high-carb craze/gov't guidelines - you need a pick-me-up when you are eating foods that put you on an insulin roller coaster and are hungry 2 hr after a meal. If you eat real food that includes fat, you don't get hungry between meals. When I was a kid in the 60's, adults rarely snacked, they ate 3 square meals and that was that. Employers would have considered you a slacker if you kept going out for snacks (unless it fit within your cigarette break :agree: )

In the past few days, I decided to try and not snack in between meals or eat as little as I could and wait for the meal.

Lo and behold, I've just gotten to 167 this morning, a number I have not been able to get to in year!! It almost feels like a miracle.

I also am just eating two hard boiled eggs with coffee and half and half in the morning and this has let me go for a long time without thinking about food. Lunch is at 1pmish if I do this.

Anyway, I feel like the stop snacking thing is like a light bulb that went off and why didn't I try it sooner.

I believe in allowing the body to rest from the digestive process by not eating so frequently. I began eating one or 2 meals a day thru intermittent fasting and it has be very beneficial for me. I have a very interesting magazine, if I can only find it, which states that a snack is no different from a meal. It also says that healthy enzymes are produced during fasting. Snacking is, IMHO, a big mistake.

the other thing that ive noticed is the concept of "eat 4-5 small meals a day" just lacks major logic.

there just is no such thing as a "small meal"
yes it sounds better than "4-5 snacks a day" or even "grazing" but cows graze all day and that is essentially what they are telling us to do.
"graze like a cow"
if we were to graze all the time we'd never be free from hunger or find freedom from struggling with weight.

whether your intermittent fasting or not, the basic 3 meals a day on low carb equals success for reducing true hunger inbetween meals.

to me a meal is an event, like 2 or 3 times a day where you invite guests and enjoy maybe 2-4 courses of food and youre sitting down enjoying every bite.

a snack is something you eat while you are multi-tasking doing other things because youre hungry or bored, or you gave in to the power of suggestion that you should eat something because of someone else's eating or an advertisement.... (ie. munching on popcorn, candy and soda in a movie theatre right after you just had dinner) ... but that usually happens on the low fat diet because when the body is properly nourished it doesnt hunger for more food.

I wonder if having 4 meals a day with one of them being just high protein (seasoned chicken breast, bacon, etc.) and then making sure the calories are in check.

I used to have the opposite problem as the other repliers. 3 meals a day didn't seem to tide me over, especially at night. I like to stay up late so when I try to go to sleep, my stomach just growls. Maybe I just have to re-train my tummy!

Another problem is that the main message in the media was "you can't make your body feel like it's starving, so you must have smaller meals more frequently, blah blah blah."

And then it gets even worse for me... don't eat before you go to bed. But then I'm thinking, well isn't it good enough if you watch your carbs, calories and not eat processed foods or trans fats?

You guys are all such pros at this and even though I've known about low-carb (and liked the idea) since I was 16, I've still got a lot of details to learn.

it might be.

But I would definitely ignore mainstream nutritional advice; it's simply utterly and completely wrong. The only difference is; those of us whose health visibly and measurably suffers on it are driven to find a better way.

The thing about low carb is that the fine tuning can differ depending on our different metabilisms and history; for some cutting carbs is all they need.

For others, we have to do a bit more to tune our body.

i never understood why people snacked when our low carb WOE doesn't make us hungry, so often..
snacking just gets us into trouble.
good post, Werebear.