We recommend leaving gaps of 3-5 hours between meals, depending on what works for you. If you’re hungry between meals, it’s good to have a balanced snack.
If you’re consistently feeling hungry between meals, take a look at how balanced your meals are. Is there a way you could make your meal more filling? Perhaps you could bulk it out with more vegetables or increase the serving size of protein or fat. It can take a bit of trial and error to find the portion sizes that work for you. Feel free to reach out to your health coach for support with this!
If we’re having a snack, it’s important to make sure that we’re snacking because we’re hungry, rather than snacking because we’re bored, tired, or stressed.
If we’re snacking in response to emotions rather than hunger, then we’re more likely to snack on ultra-processed foods, such as biscuits, crisps, or cakes. Throughout the programme, we’ll teach you how to manage your emotions in new ways, so that you don’t need to rely on food.
If we’re snacking because we feel genuinely hungry, it’s important to choose balanced snacks so that we provide our body with essential nutrients and stay fuller for longer.
Building balanced snacks
If you’re having a snack, try to include a source of protein and/or fat as this will help you to feel fuller for longer. For example, if you’re having a piece of fruit, try pairing it with some greek yoghurt or nuts.
Protein and fat are digested more slowly than carbohydrates and will help to slow down the release of glucose into the bloodstream (and therefore the release of insulin). This is a good thing for our blood glucose control and insulin sensitivity.
You can build your own balanced snacks using this handy guide:
Here are some of our favourite balanced snack ideas:
Our seed crackers and cheese (e.g. cheddar, red leicester, parmesan, or edam), hummus, or avocado
Veggie sticks (e.g. carrot, pepper, celery, edamame, radish, cucumber) with hummus, cheese, or baba gonoush
Our cheese biscuits
Our savoury slice - the recipe serves meals for 4, but for snacks, you could divide it into 8 slices
2-3 tablespoons of plain cottage cheese with a sliced nectarine
A small tin of tuna with tomato slices
Apple and 2 tbsp natural nut butter
2-3 tablespoons of plain, Greek yoghurt with a small handful of berries (e.g. blueberries, raspberries, blackberries)
Plain popcorn (no added sugar) mixed with a handful of unsalted nuts
1-2 hard-boiled eggs with spinach or tomatoes
Spicy, roasted chickpeas
A handful of mixed nuts - opt for the plain varieties, rather than salted mixed nuts or nuts coated in flavourings. Alternatively, you can roast plain mixed nuts with a little salt, pepper, and squeezed lime in the oven for roughly 15 mins at 180 degrees.
Our blueberry oat pancakes - why not make a batch for breakfast and save one for a snack throughout the week? You could pair it with some Greek yoghurt too.
Top tip: To help prevent us from making last-minute decisions based on cravings or impulse, it’s useful to prepare some snacks ahead of time. For example, chopping up vegetables into sticks so they’re ready to have with hummus or cheese, or portioning out handfuls of nuts and seeds.