Snacks

Snacks are notorious contributors to obesity and they can easily add too much to your daily fat quota. The ideal snack is an apple or an orange or a banana, but too often the urge for a bite to eat will not be put off that easily. What then?

A cup of tea with sugar and milk will ward off more serious calorie and fat loading if you give it a chance. Drink it slowly, wait a minute or two, and see if you are still hungry before eating something more substantial. If you are really starving, try breakfast cereal without too much milk or a cup of Bovril and a biscuit. Or make a sandwich with bread, lettuce, a thin sliver of lean meat, and whatever relish or pickles you prefer. A dab of mustard or mayonnaise will help. If you crave cheese, take a small amount of a strongly flavoured type. This can be extended with cottage cheese.

The craving for snacks heavy with calories and fats can be much curbed by a better pattern of the meals of the day. Too small a breakfast is apt to mean real hunger in mid-morning; the result may be that with the mid-morning cup of tea you may be tempted to eat a sausage roll or a chocolate bar you could well do without. Too early an evening meal means hunger later on. Tea in the afternoon put later will allow delaying the evening meal a little with consequent avoidance of the need to eat again before going to bed.

For mid-morning and afternoon tea breaks try to avoid rolls or pastry or indeed anything more than the merest mouthful. Finally, when you feel that you would like a little something before going to bed, try a simple glass of sparkling water, perhaps with orange juice or other fruit juice. In many cases this is all that you really need or want and you can go off to bed content with zero or no more than 20 calories and no fat.

Tea Break

If you have tea breaks, their calorie and fat contribution must be reckoned with. Sugar in a cup of tea means 15 to 30 calories and milk adds 3 to 5 more, partly as saturated fat. Four cups of tea with milk and sugar daily mean 72 to 140 calories, with fat accounting for some of it.

What is eaten along with the tea can be still worse for the unwary dieter. Fruit would be fine but many people may not enjoy it with tea. A small cake or a plain biscuit should be the limit.