Spring training

Spring Training Tips: To Snack or Not to Snack? That is the Question.

There's a lot of confusion on whether snacking is a good or bad thing.  Most of this is due to the fact that people blend social/casual and leisurely behavior in with nutritional and dietary behavior.  From a pure health standpoint, snacking is a strategy and behavior that is intended to support your overall dietary needs, which vary from person to person. 

A snack typically has half or less than half the calories of a full meal. As a general rule of thumb your nutritional and metabolic demands determine your snacking needs and behaviors.

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For example a child, a high performance athlete and a person with a chronic degenerative disease, all have higher nutritional demands that make snacking a more useful and sometimes necessary strategy to be healthy and fulfill metabolic needs. A child is growing, an athlete burns through a lot of calories, and an individual with an illness needs lots of nutrients on board to improve health.

“Snacking” as a personal and social behavior is an entirely different thing and is up to individual interpretation. Once you determine the context you can figure out the merits of your “snacking” behavior. If you’re at a ball game just enjoying yourself, a slice of pizza could be considered a snack. From a leisurely standpoint it's part of the fun and enjoyment of food so relax and enjoy it. From a health standpoint however, pizza is not the healthiest choice in terms of nutritional value and could also be considered too many calories depending on the size of the pizza and what’s on it, as well as the size of the individual and differences in caloric needs.

When in a leisurely context, you're more likely to snack when you're not even hungry. This isn't necessarily a bad thing it really depends on the individual. One thing is for sure though, stressing about snacking, ignoring or downplaying your current behaviors is not healthy.  As with most things context is key. 

-- Brandon Mentore: Optimal Sport Health Clubs Personal Trainer/Health Coach, Strength and Conditioning Coach, Functional Medicine Practitioner and Sports Nutritionist