Do you find it hard to think of what snacks to bring with you everyday? It’s ideal to eat small meals throughout the day. Breakfast, snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack and dinner, and you can add another evening snack (healthy & low calorie) if you are still hungry. You don’t want to go to bed hungry because you may wake up at 3:00am with a growling stomach and have a hard time falling back to sleep.

Why do you want to eat small, frequent meals throughout the day? It helps keep your metabolism humming along and burning fat & calories, it also keeps you satisfied, so you never get to the point of “ravenous” and want to eat everything in your eye-sight. Research shows that small meals also add up to fewer calories per day, than just eating 3 meals. And you really want to stay away from eating only 1-2 large meals a day.

Here are my favorite healthy snack ideas:

• High fiber (and portable) fruits: apples, oranges, bananas, peaches, pears
• Homemade trail mix: almonds, walnuts, dried cranberries or raisins (unsweetened) with a cup of high fiber/low calorie cereal
• Hummus – with whole grain crackers, pretzels and veggies
• Low fat yogurt or soy yogurt
• Veggies – a variety bag of carrots, celery, broccoli, sugar snap peas, etc
• Brown rice cakes with all-natural peanut butter or almond butter (optional: top with a half sliced banana)
• Brown rice cakes – cinnamon, sesame, caramel or plain
• Low fat corn tortilla chips (baked) and low sodium salsa
• Handful of almonds or walnuts or sunflower seeds
• Small handful of salt-free, dry roasted peanuts and raisins
• Apple slices with all-natural peanut butter
• Whole-wheat pretzels with roasted red pepper dip or hummus or almond butter or guacamole
• Natural, organic food bars (example: Larabars, Bora Bora bars)
• 1 cup of high fiber, low calorie Fiber cereal with a half cup milk and handful of blueberries
• Packet of Oatmeal (low sugar and add flaxseed and fruit)
• 1 cup of blueberries with a tablespoon of ground flaxseed
• Baggie of high fiber dry cereal (high fiber, low fat and low sugar)
• Dried Granny-Smith green apples (plain dried apple chips with no sugar or oils added) mixed with silvered almonds (1/2 cup apples & 1-2 tbsp of almonds)