Tag: nutrition tips

5 key Factors to Help You Prevent Night Snacking

Do you find yourself sneaking at night and rummaging through the refrigerator and cabinets for snacks? Do you empty a whole bag of chips while binge watching TV shows at night? Can’t seem to stop snacking at night? Well, you are not alone. A large portion of our population is habitual of night snacking and it eventually affects their health both physically and mentally. Night snacking leads to obesity, high blood pressure, insomnia, stress and the list goes on. It is necessary to curb this habit of night snacking in order to lead a healthy lifestyle. Here are 5 key factors to help you prevent night snacking.

  • Recognize the cause and triggers

Analyze yourself and ponder upon the reasons why you are having an urge to snack at night. The causes may be physiological or psychological. Physiological causes might be mostly due to low blood sugar that causes you to eat untimely. Or is it due so psychological reasons that are caused due to stress, anxiety, depression and has built up a habit. People often use food as a measure to curb the emotional baggage they are carrying like anger or sadness. This leads to night snacking even when they are not hungry. Night snaking can be caused due to boredom, stress, depression, eating disorders. It is also caused due to lack of sleep where you consider your tiredness for hunger. When you snack at night, your sleep gets disturbed which makes you feel tired throughout the next day and then you binge eat because of that. This creates a loop which might lead into developing an eating disorder and other health related issues such as insomnia, anxiety etc. Hence, monitoring your behavioral patterns and identifying what triggers you to eat at night will help you break the cycle of emotional eating.

  • Eat at regular intervals throughout the day

When you don’t have the right amount of food and starve yourself throughout the day, you tend feel ravenous hunger at night. This leads you to consume unwanted amount of food and increases your calorie intake. To avoid this you need to eat a proportionate and filling amount of food at regular intervals so that you are satisfied and full by the end of the night. Look into it that you don’t eat too much right before bed as it also disrupts your sleep which in turn has a negative impact on your blood sugars. It reduces the satiety hormones and increases the hunger hormones. Another thing that might help you is scheduling your meals. Eating meals at scheduled time will make you habitual in a while and you will not be starving yourself.

  • Hydrate and Increase Protein and Fiber intake.

Protein and Fiber can help you feel full faster and for a longer period. Thus, Including protein and fibrous foods will keep you satisfied and full which will prevent you from snacking at night. This also helps in maintaining a healthy intestinal and heart health. Include small amount of nuts and fruits, legumes, whole grains, oats and foods like these. They taste good and feels good at the same time. Along with this hydrate yourself well during the day. If you feel hungry or see yourself reaching for snack, try drinking water and eating a fruit or some nuts and dry fruits. This will help eliminate your mindless snacking.

  • Avoid buying junk food.

What are the foods or snacks that you tend to reach at night? If your answer is junk food then you should probably avoid purchasing them. It’s not like we stop after eating 3 or 4 chips rather we end up eating the whole bag. Detect your trigger foods and completely avoid buying them .Well as they say “Out of sight is Out of mind”, Isn’t it? Junk food is kind of self-explanatory. It is named junk food for a reason. These foods have high amounts of sodium, MSG’s and other preservatives. They are linked to a number of health problems as well.

  • Distraction is the key

You usually eat at night out of boredom or out of habit. If you work on keeping yourself busy, you might trick your mind to not think of food all the time. As they say ‘Empty mind is a devils workshop ‘, this saying totally applies here. Distraction does not mean binge watching shows or movies. Doing that makes you crave for more junk food as Movies = Snacks is the equation followed. Instead, you need to keep yourself busy doing household chores, do some artwork which is relaxing, cultivate some good hobbies. Along with this you can start exercising your body by taking brisk walks, meditating. This will help you relieve stress and keep you mind busy. Keep your health in check and aspire to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Despite all this, do you still crave for a snack at night? Let’s be real and say it won’t be easy to mend this habit in a jiffy. Hence, it is okay to snack once in a while. Instead of consuming the junk food you can try to replace the unhealthy food with some nutritional alternatives like Nuts, berries, boiled eggs, raagi or kale baked chips, fruit bowls etc. You can have additional help from a dietician along with this. One of the best dietitian in Pune Dt.Siddhi Takalkar-Deshpande,a registered dietitian and a renowned lifestyle consultant in Pune, can assist you with your queries and problems. You can visit ‘Nutriworks’ for further assistance.

Increase Haemoglobin Naturally

Low haemoglobin called anemia is a most common condition in majority of population especially in females. Recently I volunteered a blood donation camp in which I observed many healthy people who were eager to donate blood were unfit for blood donation just because of a low haemoglobin count. Low haemoglobin levels without any underlying conditions like in pregnancy, liver or kidney diseases, absorptive disorders, thalassemia, cancers, bleeding wounds etc. can be usually due to improper eating habits, low nutritional content of foods, inadequate nutrient intake or improper cooking methods which can lead to deficiency of nutrients like iron, folic acid, vitamin B12, vitamin C and proteins together responsible for low levels of haemoglobin.

When you have blood haemoglobin levels below 12.5g% it is termed as anemia. Adequate haemoglobin is required for transport of oxygen to your body cells. It also transports carbon-dioxide to lungs to be exhaled. Our body uses dynamic mechanism to maintain its haemoglobin. It tries to maintain normal haemoglobin by using these stores of nutrients like iron. Once the stores are depleted, slowly the haemoglobin levels start decreasing below normal showing various symptoms. Low haemoglobin gives you general fatigue, paleness, weakness, pale skin, shortness of breath, dizziness, cold extremities (hand and feet), tingling sensation in legs, fast or irregular heartbeat, cravings to items that are not foods (mud, clay, chalk etc.), brittle nails, headaches, etc.

Donating blood for a social cause is a good initiative for which we should keep ourselves fit not only from health point of view but also to maintain your haemoglobin count. To maintain haemoglobin throughout the year we need to have a balanced diet rich in various nutrients. Haemoglobin is made up of heme and globin which requires iron, vitamin C, folic acid, vitamin B12 and proteins. To improve your haemoglobin, you need all these nutrients in your diet in correct amount. Iron deficiency anemia is most common and is seen in majority of females than males.

Improve your iron intake by increasing following iron rich foods in your diet:

  • Non – veg : Meat and fish
  • Eggs
  • Pulses and Beans, peas and lentils.
  • Nuts – Walnuts, Roasted almonds, peanuts
  • Seeds – Garden cress (Aliv seeds), Pumpkin, Sesame and flax seeds
  • Whole grains
  • Most dark green leafy vegetables – Spinach, Shepu, Cauliflower leaves, Broccoli, Rajgeera.
  • Iron fortified breakfast cereals and breads

Usually the vegetarian varieties contain non-heme iron and require vitamin C rich foods consumed along with iron rich foods for better absorption. These foods include:

  • Amla and Guava
  • Sweet lime, orange
  • Fermented products
  • Tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, peas
  • Green leafy vegetables

Diet should contain a considerable amount of good quality protein to improve your hemoglobin levels. They include:

  • Egg
  • Lean Chicken
  • Meat and Fish
  • Milk and milk products
  • Pulses
  • Legumes

If you have a anemia due to folic acid and vitamin b12 deficiency, you need to incorporate following foods in your diet.

  • Egg yolk
  • Curd
  • Spinach
  • Gingelly seeds
  • Sorrel (Ambat Chuka), Ladies finger, Cluster beans (Gavar), Tomatoes
  • Whole Wheat

Some Important Tips to improve your haemoglobin:

  • Avoid intake of tea and coffee along with meals to improve iron absorption.
  • Cook at least 1 to 2 dishes in cast iron pan to provide two to three times more iron content than the one cooked in any other pan.
  • Consume foods rich in vitamin C and iron together to improve absorption of iron.
  • Soak, Sprout and ferment foods to improve bioavailability of iron. It reduces amount of phytates and improves iron absorption.
  • Consume minimum of processed foods which lack iron. Consume plenty of natural foods to improve overall intake of nutrients.

Improve your haemoglobin levels… Maintain it all the time…

Take a balanced diet…

Maintain your nutrition and be fit for blood donation…

As one of the few Registered Dietitians in Pune, I feel that everyone should focus on staying healthy, instead of later finding ways to fight off the diseases. I have been working as a diet consultant in Pune and I find that even common illnesses take weeks and months to get better. That’s why, “prevention is better than cure!” If you are looking for a nutritionist in Pune for such preventive diets, Nutriworks is the right place for you.