Monday, May 13, 2013

A chewy conundrum

I've always been a snacker. Unless it's a big family dinner, I'm mostly content to just graze all day and eat a variety of things at a variety of times.

(While some weight loss plans/experts suggest this is a good thing, it requires a person to be very aware of what is being grazed upon and the bad food count can add up FAST. But this post isn't about that, so I'll leave it alone for now.)

As I've been working on improving my eating habits I've been discovering I actually like various healthy foods, like apples and oranges and smoothies. (I'm a little obsesses with smoothies right now, but ones I make at home, not the sugar bombs you can buy in the food court.) The one thing I've been discovering with healthy snacks, though, is that many of them are hard and crunchy, especially when eaten as-is. (Like aforementioned apples and nuts and baby carrots.) Sure, oranges, cucumbers, yogurt, among others, don't crunch, but they're also generally cold and juicy. Of course, they should be, so that's not the problem.

The problem is that I often get a craving for something chewy and I've yet to find the perfect healthy snack to satisfy this craving.

And when I say chewy, I mean something like bologna and cheese on Wonder Bread. Pizza with melty cheese. Pasta with meat sauce. Mushroom risotto. Food that doesn't make a sound when you eat it, except the slurping sound you make as you shovel it in. Nom.

Perhaps it's not so much my love of chewy food, but what kind of chewy food I reach for that's my problem. You'll notice the examples I listed are deliciously carby and awesome calorie bombs. And any decent eating plan will include chewy foods, carby and otherwise. I'm just still looking for the "otherwise" kind of chew that will both quash my cravings but not my weight loss goals.

Wouldn't a meatball sub be awesome right now?

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