Healthy Snacking Tips

Carla Duenas, Registered Dietitian with Baptist Health South Florida, says the worst thing you can do after a workout is skipping a meal, or skipping a snack: “If you don’t eat, those muscles are not gonna recover, so you might be losing weight, but that’s going to slow down your metabolism.”

She also explains the serving size for snack has to be related to the size of your hand. For example, if you are looking for protein in a snack, like a piece of string cheese, it has to be about the size of your index finger.

What is something that is the worst thing you can do after a workout? > There’s a lot of things but one of them all I would say is just skipping a meal, skipping that snack because we think oh I just burned 400 calories 500 calories running or in the treadmill and now I’m just gonna keep saving those calories so I can keep losing weight. If you don’t eat those muscles are not gonna recover so you might be losing weight but that’s gonna actually slow down your metabolism it can get you into problems through your immune system so you don’t want to do that at all and the other thing on the other hand would be oh I just ran a 5k I can eat a cheeseburger or pizza and ice cream and so I mean it depends if it’s a reward maybe but just keep in mind if you keep doing this and then I see a lot of athletes doing they’re gonna gain weight you’re gonna gain weight it doesn’t matter how long you exercise if you eat too many calories you’re gonna gain weight so that’s I would say those are the big two biggest mistake. > So that cheeseburger will always be a cheeseburger. — Yes — So snack and serving size I feel like we cannot stress this one enough because what we recommended might be a portion like this not a whole bag of peanuts you know so talk about serving size in terms of snacks. > Yeah. I like to refer to serving sizes using the cert the size of your hand the reason for that is that it’s proportionate to your size it’s proportionate to your needs so what we’re talking about for example if a snack if you’re looking for protein in a snack a piece of string cheese is about the size of your of your finger your you know your index finger if you’re talking about a protein all you really need is the size of the palm of your hand this small size which I know it looks small but in reality it’s what you need for your own body. We’re already tend to eat a lot of protein anyway so that’s all that we need. When we’re looking at a fruit serving for a slice of fruit would be a small piece of fruit which would look like your fist or half a cup over any kind of dice fruit. So portion size is really really important and it is very specific to that person and their needs.
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