Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

The concept of Mini-Meals is a two-edged sword. Eating five to six Mini-Meals each day is an effective way of keeping you feeling full and preventing your blood sugar from dropping. If the meals start inching away from the mini size, however, you have the potential of eating more calories throughout the day. Keeping your Mini-Meals mini is the key to this technique.

The way I keep my Mini-Meals small is that I only snack on fruit and vegetables. They are so low in calories that they balance things out if I happen to overdo it a bit at dinner. I don’t recommend making your breakfast smaller. When I eat a well-rounded breakfast with enough protein to keep me satisfied, a snack between breakfast and lunch can stay small.

I usually space my Mini-Meals about two to three hours apart. Sometimes that makes me feel like I’m eating all day long. When I first started dieting, it felt really comforting to know that I only had to wait two hours until my next snack. Now that I am eating healthy on a regular basis, I am used to the Mini-Meals. I don’t get hungry between them, but they are a nice break in my day.

Favorite snack foods: V-8 Juice, apple, nectarine, orange, carrot sticks, tomato, peppers (green, yellow or red – they’re all good in their own ways), blueberries, raspberries, pear, clementines, snap peas, snow pea pods

I usually choose one or two from the above list for my snacks between breakfast, lunch and dinner. If I have two snacks, I choose one vegetable and one fruit so that I get a wider variety of nutritional value. Remember, a serving of fruit or vegetables is only a half cup. It is recommended that you eat five servings a day. If you eat two for your mid-morning snack and two for your mid-afternoon snack, you’ve polished off four servings.

Controlling the amount of food I eat has been an important factor in my weight loss success. Whether I am eating at home or at restaurants, managing my portions has been essential. Mini-Meals helped me learn how satisfied I can be with smaller portions.