Low Carbs Diet Snack Options

Our society is full of snackers (not low carbs people). How often have you been at a friend’s house, and as they open their pantry and see no crackers or chips, they exclaim, “There’s nothing to eat in this whole house!” They don’t want low carbs! Of course, they could have eaten one of those apples or oranges right next to where the snacks would be…

Low Carbs – Today, people take their lunch breaks at their desks; later, they’ll grab a snack in the afternoon, and then snack some more into the night. Unfortunately, all of these snack foods are made of either carbohydrates or sugar (or even both)! Although snacking helps to keep ones blood sugar stabilized, most pre packaged snack foods are not allowed on the Atkins dieting plan.

Most snack foods are high in calories, chalk full of carbs, and have next to no nutritional value. However, they are very tasty. The Snack Food Association, which keeps track of the sales of packaged snack foods has projected that Americans eat 3.1 billion pounds of chocolate. Another remarkable statistic is that snacking has increased by 33% since 1988. The snack food industry makes profits of over $30 billion dollars a year.

If you used to be (or still are) someone that would eat snack foods, you were probably accustomed to the worst kind of carbohydrates out there. That is because most snack foods are made from the most highly refined carbs – white flour, white sugar, corn meal, and corn syrup. Another con to these snack foods is that they are soaring in trans-fats, which is directly related to the growth of clogged arteries. Out of all the foods you could be eating, snack foods are some of the worst selections to make.

Don’t fret, though! The high carb snack food addiction can be broken with the Atkins diet. But before you make the switch from junk foods to healthy foods, you need to inform yourself about food choices. You need to comprehend how dangerous trans fats are to your body, as well as other components of foods. After you understand everything on a label, go check out the foods that you are eating. You will be surprised to see how much “bad stuff” is in the supposedly “good stuff” that you have around.

The next step is to remove all of the snack foods from your pantry. This is the easiest solution to stop eating the junk. If you don’t remove them, you will find yourself giving in to the temptation. Junk food is not good for anyone that lives in your house, and explaining this to the rest of your family may reduce some of the complaints you will probably get because of your actions.

Following the removal of bad foods, it’s time to replace them with good foods. Giving up “snack foods” is entirely different from removing “snacks” entirely. Snacks are necessary to every diet, because it keeps your blood sugar stabilized. If your blood sugar is not stabilized, you will get hungry, and will probably coddle back to your favorite junk foods.

There are many low carb snacks around then you have probably realized. String cheese sticks or small cheese rounds are easy to keep in the house, and require no preparation. Meat snack likes jerky strips and other meat products that don’t spoil over a short amount of time are also very smart choices. Of course, be sure to read the labels of these sorts of snacks to make sure there are no hidden carbohydrates.

Additional low carb snacks include instant soups if you want something hot, or low carb soy chips if you want something salty, and even celery if you want something crunchy. Peanut butter and cream cheese are toppings that you can spread on just about anything to increase your protein intake. Lastly, nuts are the quickest of all low carb snacks, as you can just grab a handful wherever you need to go.

All of these snacks are excellent for all stages of the Atkins diet, including the first few stages. Once you’re beyond the first phase, you can even add berries with cream as a sweet snack. There’s even fruit that make good snacks for the “pre-maintenance” phase.