15 Worst Snacks for Weight Loss
By Jessica Girdwain, Prevention
Attacking the snacks
From the Cheerio-toting toddler to the vending machine-loving employee, we're a nation obsessed with snacks. How obsessed? Most of us eat nearly 600 calories a day--that's roughly a third of our food--in snacks rather than meals, according to a 2010 study from the University of North Carolina.
That's a lot of snacking, something that can make or break your weight loss efforts. "There is a right way and a wrong way to snack," says Katie Ferraro, MPH, a San Diego-based registered dietitian at Ingrain Health . Done right, snacking can keep your appetite in check, fuel your workout, and give you valuable nutrients. Done wrong, and you're downing gut-busting snacks loaded with sugar and fat, says Ferraro.
And here's where it gets tricky--it's all too easy to be fooled into thinking seemingly healthy snacks are good for your waistline. Here are 15 weight loss-sabotaging snacks to avoid, and the tasty swaps to make instead.
Instead of: Strawberry yogurt
Reach for: Plain Greek yogurt with fresh strawberry slices
Some fruit-on-the-bottom varieties of yogurt contain 26 grams of sugar in a six-ounce container (that's the equivalent of three Oreo cookies). And while 12 grams of that comes from the milk itself, the rest is from the sugar-packed fruit flavoring. A recent study review published in the BMJ found that cutting back on sugar is associated with about a two-pound weight loss, while eating more results in a similar amount of weight gain. Stick to plain Greek yogurt for less sugar and a healthy dose of protein (just beware of these 6 gross Greek yogurt myths).
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