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?

My secret weapon

When I first joined WW, I started strong right away and had some great early success. In recent weeks I've seen the scale creep up a bit more than I would like but I'm still doing well and I'm slowly getting myself back on track (now that the turkey-gravy-roast beef-chocolate trap of Easter has passed). Part of that getting back on track is utilizing my secret weapon.

Grapes.

And it's nothing to do with Don Cherry or (alas) wine. Before WW, I wasn't much into fruit. It just ever really appealed to me. Now, though, I've discovered I actually enjoy eating raspberries, blueberries, melon (okay, I always liked melon) and grapes.

I'm not picky on colour - red, green or purple will do just fine; all I ask is that they be seedless. And what the Beau and I have discovered is that if we leave the grapes on the vine in the fridge, we won't eat them. Instead, as soon as I get them home, I pull them off the vine, wash them up and load them into the biggest container we have. Then when we're jonesing for something to munch on while watching TV, instead of bad food, we pull out the grapes. We have eaten a bunch of grapes in a sitting before.

This is particularly helpful because all fruit on WW logs in a zero points. I bring grapes with me to work too, to snack on in the afternoon - or at least I did. I've stopped doing that as much now and it's something I need to pick up again.

When I eat grapes regularly, I feel good, I look good and the scale moves in the right direction. It's win-win-win!

Best secret weapon ever.