What's the favourite snack of fitness professionals? Here are the results and comments for our June/July survey, where subscribers gave their insight into snacking habits.Take the current survey | Past survey results | Subscribe
Who responded?
126 people of which 86% were female
Age groups
The greatest number of respondents were in the 25-34 age group.
9% - < 18 years, 27% - 18-24 years, 20% - 25-34 years, 21% - 35-44 years, 13% - 45-54, 10% > 55 years
Three meals plus snacks is the usual eating pattern
- 70% said this is how they eat.
- 11% said they grazed throughout the day.
- 10% didn't have a set pattern or skipped meals, and
- 9% kept to three meals a day.
Comments:
As an active fitness professional, you probably need to snack between meals to fuel your body and keep energy levels up. But watch the “three meals, plus snacks” pattern in your clients. Sometimes, snacks end up the size of meals and then the snacking pattern backfires as a useful weight management strategy. Reducing total daily calories is still the key to success.Two snacks a day is the most common number
- 11% snack only once a day.
- 38% snack twice.
- 31% three times.
- 12% four times a day.
- 6% five times a day, and
- 2% snack more than five time a day.
Most snack between lunch and dinner- 61% snack between breakfast and lunch.
- 70% said they snack between lunch and dinner.
- 43% snack after dinner.
Comments:
A heavy training schedule may make it necessary to snack after dinner to top up glycogen stores, ready for the next day's exercise session. But for people who don't work out at this level, night-time snacking can add unnecessary calories and make it harder to stay in shape. It may be time to rethink those night-time snacking habits.Click here for an article on how to curb night-time munchies.
What you said about snacking?
- 43% thought they snacked too often - 37% didn't.
- 44% said they snacked when they weren't hungry - 36% didn't.
- 49% said when they started snacking, they found it hard to stop - 38% didn't.
- 51% said they snack when they are not hungry - 31% didn't.
- 57% said they were trying to snack less to control their weight - 30% didn't.
- 21% said they needed to snack to meet the energy needs of training - 58% didn't.
Comments:
These figures all suggest that snacking may be providing more calories than are really needed. When you think about snacking, ask yourself "Do I really need the calories based on the physical activity I'm doing?"And what you snack on?
Fruit is the clear snack winner, with bananas the most popular fruit, followed by apples, grapes and blueberries.
Raw carrots win for vegetables and these seem to end up mixed with cottage cheese or shredded with dried fruit.
Nuts (almonds, walnuts and brazil nuts) and seeds (pumpkin, sunflower) were also a popular additional suggestion.
Here's the survey breakdown:
- 84% fruit
- 51% yoghurt
- 46% chocolate
- 43% biscuits
- 40% bread
- 30% snack bars
- 28% vegetables
- 26% cheese
- 25% potato crisps
- 11% protein shakes
- 10% breakfast cereal
- 7% protein bars
Comments:
Most of these are all great healthy choices and I'm sure you can pick te ones that you may not want to snack on too much. Chocolate is nice in small quantities. If you feel you eat to much of it or too often, there are a stack of ideas for what to eat instead of chocolate in the results of the Chocolate Cravings Survey.
And here's some of your suggestions for "favourite healthy snacks" which show how simple foods can be combined into a heakthy taste sensation. Do your taste buds a favour and try these, especially the last one?
- Slice of cape seed bread with a thin spreading of tahini and a banana.
- I love yoghurt beacause it fills me up and helps to increase my calcium intake. I also like a plate of strawberries, almonds and reduced fat cheese. It feels like a specialty.
- Smoothie-Blend - 1/2 cup soy milk, 1/4 cup fruit juice, 1/4 cup water, 2 ice cubes, 2 scoops vanilla whey protein, some berries/pinnapple/or 1/2 banana.
- I have four containers with dried apricots, figs, dates & raw almonds. So when I go to the cupboard its which ever one I feel like at the time.
- Right now I'm hooked on baby dried figs.
- I love to chew approximately 3 dried appricots, 2-3 almonds and 2 pieces of ginger all at once and thoroughly chew together as it is very rewarding to me.
- 1 orange and 1 kiwi chopped in 200g no fat vanila yoghurt.
- Peanut butter, banana, chilli sandwich.
A big thank you to all who completed the survey!Top | Subscribe |
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