Healthy Snacks to Satisfy Your Cravings - Ask a Nutritionist

Transcript: 

Leah: Hello and welcome back to “Ask a Nutritionist”, our weekly mini episode of Dishing Up Nutrition. I am Leah Kleinschrodt, Registered and Licensed Dietitian, with Nutritional Weight & Wellness. Before we get into today's topic, I want to remind and invite listeners to join our Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook group, if you haven't already.

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So today we're going to dive into something we all deal with at some point. And that's cravings. So everyone's a little bit different. Some people lean more towards the sweet, some people lean more towards the salty, the crunchy. For other people, it's the chocolate. It can vary the time of day, morning, noon, night. We've all been there at one point or another.

But here's the thing, cravings aren't random. Cravings are usually your body trying to tell you something. So when I sit down with clients, I will often use the verbiage like we're going to be detectives. We're going to get really curious and ask a lot of questions, and just try to figure out what is our body trying to communicate us?

What are our bodies trying to get us to see or pay attention to? And that can give us a lot of great insights into what's going on, lifestyle wise, diet wise, anything like that, that could help with those cravings.

So today I am going to offer some of just the clinical insights from myself and my colleagues. We're going to break down why cravings happen, how to tell if you're actually hungry, and then what to do and what to eat when those cravings actually hit.

Why might people get cravings? (#1: the blood sugar connection)

So let's get into it. First, let's answer the question, why do I get cravings? The short answer is cravings are usually coming from a mix, and it's a mix typically of some biology, some habits, and blood sugar swings. So let's tackle blood sugar swings first. I do find this then is very impactful and very powerful for most people, and if you're a regular Dishing Up Nutrition listener, you know by now we talk a lot about blood sugar in almost all of our shows. It's that important.

If you are eating a lot of refined, processed, and/or higher carb foods, or you're going for more than, say a few hours without a balanced meal or a snack, your blood sugar typically starts to dip. This leads to cravings and typically we're not craving the broccoli and the butter and the chicken at that point. It's typically for some of those quick hitting sugars or quick hitting carbohydrates.

So we want to balance blood sugar by pairing together our three main macronutrients, proteins, real food carbs, and healthy fats. And then we want to try staying in a rhythm with our eating patterns throughout the day. And for most of my clients, this looks like eating something every three to four, maybe every five hours or so.

The nutrient gap connection to cravings

And whether that is a full blown meal or whether it's a snack to tide us over. The next clue beyond blood sugar balance, we look for nutrient gaps. Sometimes your body is lacking in protein, in fat, or key minerals like magnesium or zinc, and we'll get into those in a little bit.

Now, balancing blood sugar should, for the most part, fill the nutrient gaps of fat and protein. When we talk about eating real food, food that our grandparents would recognize as food, food that comes from the farm and not from the factory;

When we eat this real food diet that's rich in vegetables and high quality animal proteins, a lot of times this can help us keep a great mineral balance, but there are some things from a lifestyle perspective, environmental perspective, or things that do deplete us of those minerals, and sometimes even a real food diet is not enough to keep up with some of those minerals, so supplementing with some key minerals.

Again, like I mentioned, magnesium and zinc are two examples. They're not the only ones, but they're two examples. These can be a simple tool to help fill in those gaps as well.

The cravings connection to habits & conditioning

Cravings can also come from habits and conditioning. Think about popcorn and a movie, a glass of wine or two after work, the sweet treat after dinner, walking by the candy dish at work. Your brain learns to anticipate and expect these things even if you're not physically hungry.

The stress & emotions connection

I also want to think about stress and emotions. Have you ever found yourself craving sugar or craving food in general when you're under stress or you had an especially hard day? So stress increases cortisol, which can drive cravings for sugar or comfort foods, but sugar and food in general can also, we can learn, sometimes we learn to use these as tools to soothe intense emotions or even to just numb out or distract from difficult emotions. So from those big stressors or from whatever has happened in your day.

Lack of sleep can contribute to cravings

Let's also think about the lack of sleep. You may have noticed that when you don't sleep well, your cravings are higher for a day or two, or maybe even three afterwards, and there is a biological reason for this. Poor sleep disrupts our hunger and satiety hormones, so it makes craving stronger the next day.

It also disrupts blood sugar balance. So we talked about blood sugar just a minute ago. It disrupts blood sugar balance and it makes it more difficult to handle the sugar that you do consume and this fatigue, lack of sleep, this part, I've had several clients just lately actually identify fatigue and lack of sleep as the primary drivers behind their cravings and deviating from their balanced nutrition plan and their good intentions.

So it's great to have that awareness and then we want to make a plan around that. So all of this to say is just that cravings aren't just about a lack of willpower. You don't need to just white knuckle your way through. These are clues about imbalances or clues about what our bodies need in that moment.

And sometimes they are physiological, sometimes they are more emotional and psychological. So we have to start, again, kind of going back to do that detective work, we have to start getting curious about where these cravings are coming from.

Ask reflective questions

So let's bridge that then into how do you know if you're actually hungry or if you're just craving something out of the blue. So these are some reflective questions that you can ask yourself. And actually before I even launch into these questions, I will say for many of us, this is even a skill in and of itself to be able to hit pause and ask these questions when you're in the midst of that strong urge or those cravings.

Like when, when you're feeling that pull in that moment, it can feel really difficult to actually ask these questions because our toddler brains, for better or for worse, want what we want and we want it right now. So I just would say, take these questions and give it a go when the opportunity hits, like take that pause, take that breath before you actually head to the refrigerator and ask these questions.

So first, would I eat a real meal right now? If the answer is yes, you're likely hungry. If you are only wanting cookies or candy or chips, or if it's something very specific that sounds good, it's probably more of a craving.

So second, you can ask yourself, where am I feeling this? Or How am I feeling this hunger? Hunger, actual hunger, there should be physical signals to this, so think about stomach growling, and not everybody's stomachs growl, but that could be one sign is stomach growling or gurgling, or it's getting a little extra noisy, low energy;

Brain fog or the example that I often give is if I have to go back and read an email five times over before it penetrates my brain, to me that is a signal that's like, okay, my brain is starting to run out of energy. It's time to eat something. Headaches; some people get headaches if they're, again, if their blood sugar's a little off kilter, they're going a little too long between meals and snacks.

Feeling even a little bit more anxious and maybe feeling a little shaky. A craving is likely more mental and like I mentioned before, it's think about like craving a specific food, like specific chocolate or like a specific salty snack.

And third, ask yourself, when was the last time I ate and what did I eat? AKA how balanced was that last meal or snack that I had? So if you ate a balanced meal of protein, healthy fats, real food carbohydrates in the last hour or two, it's likely not true physiological hunger. If, say you had a few bites of your kid’s leftover bagel for breakfast while rushing out the door and picked up a white chocolate mocha on the way to work, and you're finding you're hungry by your 9:30 in the morning meeting, it is likely hunger because you lacked protein, fiber, some of those good stabilizers at that last meal, and now you're off on a blood sugar rollercoaster.

More on the balanced blood sugar connection to helping with cravings

So now we've covered some of those basics of why behind the cravings. And ideally when we start eating in balance, every couple hours like that, every three, four or five hours or so, you'll see those cravings go away. And I see this with clients a lot when I work one-on-one with clients. One of the first things they notice when they start eating real food in balance and establishing a good rhythm to their day, their cravings either significantly improve and they may even go away completely.

And the nice thing, especially if it's blood sugar related, a lot of these go away or really get tempered down within the first few days. So this isn't one of those things, typically, again, if it's more blood sugar related that you need to do this for eight weeks before you might even notice a difference. You can actually notice a pretty big difference fairly quickly. So again, it can be a, a fairly quick fix once you get the hang of that balanced way of eating.

What are some healthy options when craving something sweet?

But let's just say again, like there are other types of cravings, there's other reasons, and some of these might be out of our control. And maybe you're up against those cravings every now and again. What are your options in that moment?

What are the healthy options when you're craving sweet? So let's talk about the sweet and then we'll get a little bit more into kind of the savory, salty, crunchy that people also crave. In the case of sweets, a lot of times, your body is looking for a quick source of energy.

It's trying to bring those blood sugars up or we're trying to kind of stimulate something or trying to get going. So the idea though is we don't want to indulge in those cravings and end up on a blood sugar roller coaster, and then you get into a crash scenario later and then you really don't feel great and you have more cravings.

So how do we get the sweet, but without the crash? A couple of options: doing something like yogurt with berries and cinnamon. So you get, again, like a little protein and a little bit of carb from the yogurt, a little bit of fat. Also, you get some of the berries in there, some of those real food carbs, but also some of that just real food sweetness.

And cinnamon is such a great like sweet flavor pair or enhancer that it's, it's a really nice thing to kind of throw in there as well. Another example might be a balanced protein shake. So you use some whey protein powder, Paleo protein powder. Some people do opt for more of the vegan or the plant-based protein powders.

That's fine. Just check out your ingredients on the back. And usually you throw some kind of fruit in there with that. Frozen berries are, are a, a very common type of thing to throw in there, but you could throw a little, some banana slices in there. You could do something like peaches. I'm just kind of thinking summer's coming our way. So starting to think about more, some of summer flavors like that.

So you have your protein. You throw in some fruit for those real food carbohydrates and then round it off with a little bit of fat, some canned coconut milk, some heavy cream. If you can do some dairy, some nut butter to blend up there, whether that's peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter, something along those lines.

And then you can use water or something like a good almond milk to get that liquid in there, but that balanced protein shake again, even that something sweet and something that you can sip on, is helpful to balance those blood sugars, especially later in the afternoon.

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Something similar along those same lines where it's kind of like a three for one. You get the protein, fat, and carbohydrates all in one mix. We have a couple of protein muffin recipes on our website. We've also got a couple of, like protein energy ball types of recipes. Both of these use protein powder, so they're a nice kind of like finger food, usually tend on the sweet side, a nice little snack thing.

I love these ideas for people because you can also make a big batch ahead of time and then just eat off of those throughout the week or put some in the freezer, bring them out later. Lots of options there. Even doing something simple like some apple slices with some almond butter or peanut butter, especially I think about this a little bit more during the summer months, but you can take a banana, slice it up so that there are little coins, like little banana coins, and you can even make a little sandwich out of those banana pieces and the peanut butter.

They're really great too if you throw those in the freezer, it's kind of that nice, cold, sweet, creamy kind of treat. Cottage cheese and pineapple or peaches makes for a great combo. Chia pudding. There's lots and lots of recipes. We've got one or two on our website, but there's lots of recipes and lots of concoctions out there that you can find on the internet and most of them, again, I would say if you could throw some protein in there, some protein powder or even mix in a little bit of yogurt, throw some berries in there, maybe some cacao powder or cacao nibs. Those are great options just to like add a little spark of interest in there.

And going back to the idea of, with the bananas and the peanut butter, you can also make an ice cream alternative with those frozen bananas blended up with some real heavy cream, or use that peanut butter, freeze it in the freezer. Again, makes for kind of a nice cool summer like, or more kind of like that ice cream kind of treat.

The key is pairing that natural sweetness. A lot of times we gravitate towards that fruit for that. If we take some of that natural sweetness and pair that with the proteins and the healthy fats, that helps those blood sugars stay stable while we do get, kind of satisfy some of those taste buds with that natural sweetness.

Now I will put myself in this category. What about those chocolate cravings? I would say personally for me, this is if I'm going to pick anything, like it's definitely going to be chocolate. And chocolate cravings aren't random, as I mentioned, they can for some people it can be a mineral deficiency.

Magnesium is that mineral, and real dark chocolate is actually a source, a natural source of magnesium. So if you have those really intense, strong chocolate cravings, that can sometimes be your body's way of saying, I need more magnesium.

So supplementing with a good quality magnesium, like Magnesium Glycinate can help reduce those chocolate cravings over time. But in the meantime, if those chocolate cravings do come up, a couple of ideas, you can really go for that good quality, dark chocolate. And when I say dark chocolate, can we pick something that's 70% cacao content or higher? Can we push that up to 80, 85, 90% even? You might not be able to get there right away. Start a little lower. Start with that 70%. You will be surprised actually over time as you edge your way up there that you will be satisfied with less sweet over time.

Playing off of that chocolate or playing off of that protein shake idea, you can make a chocolate protein shake using chocolate whey protein powder, cocoa powder. I'd say usually bananas make the best pairing with something like that; you could use frozen berries. Some people love, say like frozen cherries. They like the cherry chocolate combination. It's not my personal favorite, but I know some people really love that.

And then add that healthy fat in there. So if it's, if you're using a banana and using chocolate protein, do peanut butter in there. If you're using like, frozen cherries or some kind of frozen berries with a chocolate protein powder, use canned coconut milk. Or you could even try a couple slices of avocado in there. Avocado is a pretty neutral taste, but we just want to mix in some of those healthy fats for that stabilization of the blood sugars also.

You could take whole milk yogurt, mix that with cocoa powder or chocolate protein powder. We've got at least one example on our website of a protein hot chocolate. So as I'm recording this right now, it's April in Minnesota, so we're getting some flashes of warm, but some flashes of cold still.

So there are some days actually where that protein hot chocolate might sound really good. You can use that chocolate protein powder. We also carry chocolate Key Greens, which is a fruit and vegetable powder blend that you could use for making a simple hot chocolate. And you can, if you can tolerate dairy, you can use regular milk. Otherwise, something like an almond milk would be a great way to just, again, kind of get that liquid medium in there.

So we've got lots of great recipes for healthier sweet treats on our website, which is weightandwellness.com. So please like take advantage of that. Go explore, see if any of these things kind of ring true or resonate with you.

What might be behind salty, crunchy cravings? (+ sample ideas)

Now, the healthy snacks, if you're craving, if you're, if you've got more of that salty, crunchy kind of flavor that you're going for. I find salty cravings often come from electrolyte balances, dehydration, so these kind of things go hand in hand. Stress tends to be a big one for people. So if you're looking for better salty options, take a look at roasted nuts or seeds that are lightly salted, without added oils.

So that's usually like a dry roasted type of nut. So you could have some salt, you could have a little seasoning on there. Just look at those ingredients that we’re not sneaking some of those more refined oils in there. Some people love olives and pickles for that salty, they're not crunchy necessarily, but you get that salty briny kind of flavor. Even adding a pinch of salt to some hard boiled eggs.

Again, eggs for the most part have a pretty mild taste, so adding a little pinch of salt or some “everything but the bagel” seasoning on there might be enough to just add that little bit of salt punch there.

Doing something like avocado, mashed up with, again, salt, a little lemon, and then you use that as a dip for raw veggies instead of going for the chips. Some of my clients have liked using seaweed snacks, so like those sheets of seaweed, again, check the oils that are made in there. You could have some salt in there, but you can make those into little wraps where you use either like a little cream cheese or some avocado slices.

Maybe add a little smoked salmon in there, or even some canned chicken and roll that up into a wrap of sorts and eat it like that. We also get then that protein, that carb, that fat piece of it. Roasted edamame is another option. Even a half of a brat with sauerkraut, that gets you again, like a, a good amount of that salt. But it also, you pair that with a probiotic rich food, they go really well hand in hand. A little messy if you're trying to eat it at work.

That might be more of a home type of option, but that one's a delicious one. A couple of meatballs with some baby carrots and I had a client recently, no, a couple of weeks ago I would say, who said she will do some herbed goat cheese on cucumber slices and also pair that with just some sliced hard boiled eggs.

She found that that worked really well when she just did need something a little saltier. And you also get a little bit of that crunch from the cucumber slices. And for some people actually just drinking water and/or adding some electrolytes, especially if those electrolytes have a decent amount of sodium in them, that can be enough to just even reduce or take the edge off of those salty cravings.

If you do choose to use an electrolyte powder, just again, be sure to read the ingredients label. We don't want added sugars from that necessarily. If it's using a little stevia or a little monk fruit, that's fine.

And sometimes I found with clients, even just doing a little bit more salt on the foods that you're cooking at home can be enough to take the edge off of the salt cravings the rest of the day.

Reasons why cravings might hit at night (+ what helps in this scenario?)

Now, what about if your cravings hit at night? I'd say this is a very common time, like we get into those kind of quieter, more downtime hours after dinner or kind of later into the evening. So those nighttime cravings are super common. Many times, it's not necessarily about hunger, but if you do have hunger, some of that could be you're not eating enough throughout the day.

So there actually could be true hunger at that time. You might not have loaded up enough on fat and protein earlier in the day too. So these are times where this is the time then when your body says, I need to play catch up. I didn't get enough during the day. Like, let's make sure we eat something still later on in this evening.

So those can definitely be factors, but there can also be that habit. So again, like your brain associates nighttime with snacking, that could be a role for people. And then things like, so back to the stress or back to boredom or even fatigue. Sometimes we are craving stuff or we're looking for some of that, some of those foods or some of these snacks at night.

Sometimes it's to downregulate, distract or numb out, and sometimes it's actually about like, I'm just trying to get a little bit more energy so I can finish out the rest of my day. So it's actually more of a pick me up or a stimulator. So just ask yourself again, it's about being curious and asking those questions like, what purpose is this snack serving for me?

Or like, where do I think these cravings are coming from? So what helps in that scenario? I'd say for the most part, again, if we can stay in a good rhythm throughout the day, eating those balanced meals that have a good whack of fat, have a good whack of protein, use some of those real food carbs, and we're eating every three to four hours, that is usually enough to tide people over then once those later evening hours hit.

Including enough protein. So when I say enough protein for most people, we're aiming for about four to six ounces of protein at least two of those meals. And maybe ideally trying to get up to the, like three meals, having that four to six ounces of cooked protein.

So skipping on that protein piece can lead to cravings at night. Even if you are including a little bit at each meal. We, we need to have enough to really kind of hit that satiety button. If you are truly hungry, go for something balanced, not just carbs, not just one thing or another.

If possible, it's best not to bring home the high sugar stuff or the ultra processed stuff, so that they're not tempting you or calling you from the cupboard. And really I'd say most of the snacks that I've talked about already could make the cut for a great bedtime snack. I will say some people find that the protein in the evening is a little heavy, maybe unnecessary at night, so they do better actually with just a few bites of a carbohydrate and pairing that with a little bit of fat.

So I'd say most of those, some of those recommendations that talked about fruit plus some nuts or a little nut butter, like the apple peanut butter combo. I've even dug into the fridge and grabbed out some mashed purple sweet potato and put a little almond butter on that just to have, you know, two or three bites of that before going to bed. This could look like again, baby carrots and some guacamole. Just something simple. Try some of those on for size. See if they calm those cravings and see if they actually even help you sleep a little bit better.

And before I let you go, one final point to cover, I want to clear up just some snacks that tend to be marketed as healthy, but they aren't necessarily the best choice for our health. Marketing can be misleading, so granola bars often packed with sugar and low in protein, but you'll see a wide variety of those at the store and they often have a lot of health claims on the front.

Store-bought trail mix. Typically tends to be heavier on the candy and the dried fruit side, more so than the nuts. So if you make it at home, you can flip that ratio. That can be a simple alternative. Make it more nut and seed heavy versus dried fruit.

Smoothies that are like store bought, bottled prepackaged, they can have, some of them could have as much sugar or more as a soda. Flavored yogurts also usually add loaded with added sugars, veggie chips and veggie straws, despite their names are not veggies, they're no better than potato chips a lot of times.

And kind of the same thing as granola bars. Like there's a lot of on the market in terms of protein bars. Some of them can have a pretty high sugar content, usually refined oils use, not great ingredients. So just beware of these types of options that, again, typically have that health halo put around them, but they may not be the best choice.

So what we're looking for instead, we're looking for short ingredients lists, low added sugars, a good balance of some protein, some fat, and some fiber. So hopefully there was some nugget in there that was helpful for you and something that you could say to yourself, oh, I could try that.

I can see how that treats my body and see how my cravings do with that. So as a, to wrap up, I do want to remind our listeners that cravings, they're not the enemy. They're information. When you eat balanced meals, we stay hydrated, we do our best to get as much good quality sleep as we can, and just having in our back pockets, some of those smarter swaps, we can either get ahead of those cravings or we can satisfy them without the crash or the guilt.

So I want to thank you all for tuning in to “Ask a Nutritionist”, and if you found this helpful, please share it with a friend, a family member, a coworker who's always battling the snack drawer. And don't forget to join our Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook group.

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As I mentioned at the top, get more ideas from our dietitians, other listeners. Just be a part of that community that lifts each other up. And remember, you don't need to battle cravings through willpower alone. We just need to understand what's causing them in order to overcome them.

So you can work with a dietitian and Nutritional Weight & Wellness that can help you do that detective work and kind of dive into what's going on with your unique biochemistry or your schedule.

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So if you're curious about meeting with me or one of my fellow dietitians, you can visit our website weightandwellness.com to learn more, or give us a call at (651) 699-3438. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.