100 Calorie Packs – Is Less More?

Nov 13, 2011

I get interviewed by a website called HerCampus.com fairly regularly.  I always enjoy contributing although I never know till they write it up whether or not I will be quoted.  They do a really interesting variety of college relevant topics.  Check it out sometime.

Anyway, this is one I recently did on 100 Calorie packs that I thought would be interesting to my clients too.  You can see the writer’s questions and my answers.

Her Question:  What exactly do you do as a Nutritionist?

My answer:  I deal specifically with weight management in my practice of 20 years and although my focus is largely behavioral (I think people don’t so much lack knowledge about what to do, but more lack the ability to figure themselves out well enough to get themselves to do it on an on-going basis), I have found myself focusing more and more on teaching people how to nourish themselves adequately.  I found out from long experience with my own painful eating disordered history, that I had made the process of recovery infinitely harder by eating in such a way that I was never nourished.  A poorly nourished brain can in itself create distorted body image issues and literally cannot process logical thoughts properly.  That is outside of the fact that the internal biochemical signals to feed an under-nourished body are extremely complex and strong, or human beings wouldn’t have survived years of famines in our histories.

During my 30’s and 40’s we were under the misguided nutrition direction that we needed to eat as little fat as possible.  This, along with tons of processing of our foods in general, gave rise to a whole food industry centered on refined, fat free carbohydrates and totally artificial condiments.  To their credit it must be said, when they told us to eat low fat and high carb, BTW, they meant broccoli and brown rice, not Snackwells and bagels.

Even so, anyone with any kind of food/mood issues is not going to be able to create adequate brain chemicals to make enough neurotransmitters.  Add this to the fact that fat free (or fake fat) refined carbohydrate foods (missing virtually all their vital nutrients) actually stimulate appetite, and you have the makings of an appetite that is out of control.  Recent research demonstrates (see David Kessler’s The End of Overeating) that when you get the exact right combination of sugar, fat and salt, you will override the natural mechanisms that would have down-regulated appetite, and instead override them and create a need for more of the substance to get the same level of pleasure –  just like cocaine, BTW.

So, to your question about the value of snacking and the 100 calorie packs in particular, I would first say that it totally depends on how you are using them;  that is, what place they hold in your overall nutrition program.

Her question:  How big should our meal proportions be?

My answer:  However big they need to be to fill you up without causing you to overspend your budget.  It you don’t want to weigh a lot and do want to eat a lot, you simply have to eat more of your volume from lower calorie foods (vegetables and lean proteins specifically).  An invaluable thing to figure out about yourself is how much volume it takes you to be satisfied and full and then how much of that needs to be vegetables for you to be able to make your budget work.

Her question:  Additionally, how big should our snack proportions be?

My answer:  I think it is more an issue of what percent of your budget can be allotted for them without preventing you from getting your nutritional needs met.  If you don’t weigh much, you have less room to play, unless you are willing to increase your available budget with exercise.  I think that, especially in slim women, it’s hard to get your nutritional needs met if you allot any more than 15-20% of your daily calories to junk.  Fortunately if you do get your nutrition covered, you will likely not be craving so much of the junk.  It is a bit of a catch 22.  The more crap you eat, especially early in the day when it has a tendency to both biochemically and behaviorally “open Pandora’s box”, the more you will want.  You can’t really just “get it out of your system”.  It is more like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors:  the more you feed your appetite for crap, the bigger that appetite actually gets.

Her question:  In general, what are the nutritional benefits and drawbacks of replacing meals with snacks? Are there any long- term effects from doing so?

My answer:  I think the real issue is what you snack on.  If you snack on real food, then you may well find that eating several mini-meals during the day works really well for you as long as you can make it convenient.   It does regulate insulin better, which would be better for blood sugar management and theoretically appetite.  I have also found that people aren’t overweight because they are eating too much real food.  The great thing about it is that if you aren’t really hungry, chances are you won’t want it.  When it comes to junk, who can tell if they are actually hungry for it?  Try asking yourself if you want to finish off your lunch salad and you will immediately be able to tell if you are really hungry.  But cheese nips always sound good.

So the nutritional issues with picking junk is that not only are you not getting any nourishment, but you are actually pulling nutrients from your body to process them (the nutrients that nature would have naturally included in the food before we processed them out), your appetite is not lessened – it is likely increased, and now you have created cravings for more of the same so that you will be looking for more crap not more real food, and finally, that it tends to dull your palate for real food.  They call these foods hyper-palatable for a reason.

Her question:   “100 Calorie Packs” are a college girl’s go-to snack. Are these healthy for you? Are there any “100 Calorie Packs” that you’d recommend over others?

My answer:  The only 100 calorie pack I know of that is not junk is raw almonds, but there may be others.  Anything that is still real food in its natural form could certainly be a healthy thing.  But even dehydrated fruits and veggies, while not processed exactly, have shrunk by so much that it is easy to eat tons more than you would have of the real thing.  They are very calorie concentrated when you remove all the water.

The real benefit to 100 calorie packs is mainly that they create a barrier between you and the next 100 calories.  If you keep multiple options available you will likely end up with several hundred calories of several different junk things, all eaten in 100 calorie increments!

Her question:  College girls are obsessed with counting calories in order to lose or maintain their weight. What are the pros and cons of doing so? What else do we need to consider when getting fit?

My answer:  The pros are that you do have to be accountable to a budget and calories quantify the task.  Also, once you know what things “cost” you can have a conversation about whether or not it is worth it to you, not whether or not some outside authority (diet program for example) has told you it is allowed.  You decide.  Also, you are not stuck wearing your over-expenditures be they planned or unplanned.  You always have the option of being accountable to your budget – just like with money.

The cons have to do with what you choose to do with this information.  If you use it to eat badly and just make the budget work, then you will likely never solve a weight problem because most overweight people can’t pull it off for the same reasons I outlined above.  Even if you can, I believe that there are severe long term health consequences to a nutritionally deplete diet.  Fortunately or unfortunately, you may not see or feel these when you are 19 years old – they show up much later in many cases.  I didn’t eat for an entire summer when I was 19 and, other than being cold, felt pretty much fine at the time.  Lord only knows what long term problems that may ultimately have created, but you couldn’t tell me that at 19 and getting “skinny”.  I also wish I hadn’t smoked.

I do think that most eating disordered people tend to be severely nutritionally depleted and for sure that is making it much much harder to pull themselves out of that endless cycle.

But fitness is another issue and requires exercise that balances cardio bursts with strength training, stretching and flexibility.  They are all part of the puzzle with cardio only filling one quarter of the picture.  I know that I overdid the cardio all throughout my 30’s and 40’s.  If I knew then what I know now, I would probably be sporting 10 more pounds muscle so vital to metabolism and longevity.  Live and learn, right?

Her question:  What are some healthy snack ideas?

My answer:  any that involve vegetables and proteins for starters.  Also fruit in moderation is great when combined with a protein and fat.  In addition to the ones I mentioned above… any leftover real food from your meal, turkey and cheese roll ups with a slice of pepper inside and hummus as a dip, a quarter of a turkey sandwich or even pb and j, hearty soups (that are not all noodles or rice), leftover Chinese veggies with some sauce, a few brown rice sushi pieces that have big pieces of fish to outweigh the rice, turkey chili, hard boiled eggs (even made up into egg salad), tuna salad on celery or some whole grain crackers, pumpkin seeds with the shell (Trader Joe’s are the best).  I have a ton of ideas and also what to eat for breakfast on my website under So, What Should I Eat?

Her question:  In terms of nutritional value, do a bunch of snacks equal a meal?

My answer:  If your snacks are real food, then a bunch of them can in fact equal a meal – like individual cottage cheeses and fruits, peanut butter and apple, pear and goat cheese, hummus and carrots or peppers.

Her question:  How often do you think a college girl, or young women, in general should eat during the day?

My answer:  Typically every three hours or so, but some people feel much better if they eat more frequently.  More than four hours (although you may not feel hungry while you are not eating – especially if you are busy at something) often leads to overeating when you finally do eat.  It really works well to eat before you are really hungry.  Ultimately she needs to eat as often as it takes to keep her from cravings and overeating.  But content of diet is at least as important if not more than timing.

For those who are afraid to “handle” food that often, I think they will find that that is not such a problem if they are choosing real food.  It is naturally more likely to be self limiting, especially if you focus on proteins and veggies with some fat and don’t go for the breads and crackers.

**One final note, especially for college girls – no matter how much you know or how good your intentions are, everyone is influenced by what is around them.  I you, or your roommate, create a veritable smorgasbord of 100 calorie options under you nose all the time, you will likely eat them.  I really recommend limiting the variety of what junk you keep on hand at any given time as both a statement to yourself of your intention of not having so much of it, and an environment that supports that intention, and makes it possible.

Begin your final weight loss journey now…