6 Ways to Crush Your Snack Cravings

Let’s chat about snack cravings. These cravings can make or break your fitness success. When you succumb to your snack cravings, you go well over your macros, putting yourself into a caloric surplus, which holds you back from seeing optimal results.

So how can you start to take control of these annoying snack cravings that you struggle with on the daily? Here are Dialed Health’s top 6 tips…

1. Drink water!

Did you know your body cannot always tell the difference between hunger and thirst? This means that in some cases when you feel hungry, you’re in fact just thirsty.

If you drink water and wait 20-30 minutes, more often than not, you’ll realize you didn’t actually need a snack. What you actually needed was to hydrate with water.

Fill up a 24-ounce mason jar, chugged it, wait 20 minutes, and most likely that craving to snack will be gone!

2. Electrolytes

Make your water taste more satisfying by mixing some electrolytes into your water.

Chugging water may fill up your stomach, but sometimes it’s not about that. Sometimes we want to snack because we are craving a delicious taste in our mouth.

Electrolytes are the perfect alternative. They are low calorie or zero calorie and it gives you something satisfying to sip on through your entire day. to your water to sip on throughout your day. Low-calorie or zero-calorie.

Plus, did you know the loss of sodium increases feelings of hunger?  Adding supplemental electrolytes makes sure you prevent a hunger-inducing loss of sodium and other minerals as blood sugar and insulin levels improve.

3. Drink bubbly water.

Again, if chugging a huge glass of water just isn’t satisfying for you, make bubbly water your go-to way to hydrate when you feel snack cravings arising. Instead of reaching for extra carbs, grab a can of bubbly water and crush your cravings.

In fact, did you know your mid-afternoon slumps that make you want to snack for more energy are generally just caused by dehydration? You most likely don’t need more food for energy, you just need to better hydrate in order to get your energy levels up again.

Plus, not only does bubbly water do a fantastic job making your stomach feel full, but all the different flavors you can choose from are extremely enjoyable!

4. Get some caffeine.

Along with hydrating, caffeine also does an amazing job at crushing your snack cravings.!

When you think you need to grab extra carbs for energy, you’ll realize that caffeine gives you the energy you need without sacrificing all the calories.

Even if you add some milk or stevia, that’s only 30 calories. Best low-calorie snack ever, right?!

5. Wait as long as possible to eat in the morning.

Call it intermittent fasting if you would like, or don’t label it at all, but prolonging breakfast can be a great way to set yourself up for success nutritionally for the day.

When you spike your blood sugar levels first thing in the morning with an early breakfast, you set yourself up for a blood sugar rollercoaster ride all day long.

High blood sugar levels are often the culprit of snack cravings. The more in control we are of our blood sugar, the more in control we will be of our snack cravings. Prolonging breakfast keeps your blood sugar more stable throughout the rest of your day.

Having a longer period between your last meal of the day and the first meal of the day also works wonders at resetting your hunger hormones.

When your hunger hormones are “reset”, you can trust that when you feel hungry you’re actually hungry and it’s not your out-of-whack hormones making you believe otherwise.

6. Veggies before dinner.

In many cases, the worst time for snacking is when cooking dinner. You just finished a workout or a ride, or it’s been hours since lunch, and you are just ravenously hungry. So while you're cooking dinner, you SNACK!

Does that sound about right? If yes, here’s what you can do instead…

Cook veggies first, before you cook your dinner!

This allows you to snack on the veggies while you’re cooking dinner and prevents you from getting into a huge calorie surplus from snacking.

This also ensures you don’t sit down to eat dinner feeling overwhelmingly ravenous and then eating way more than your body needs, again, putting you into a huge caloric surplus.

This helps mitigate some of the hunger, and you can then sit down for dinner and eat without having to stuff your face with more food than your macros allow.