Sports Are Back: 4 Snacking Survival Tips to Avoid a Weight Penalty

With sports back in full swing, your nights and weekends may be full of time in front of the television.  When you sink into your favorite seat, you generally have a beverage and snack of choice close by.  To prevent you from having a whistle blown on your weight gain, here are four snacking survival tips to avoid a weight gain penalty.

1.    Don’t Step Out of Bounds on Portion Control

Should you find yourself on a Sunday afternoon tiptoeing down the sideline and into your kitchen for a snack, the last thing you want to do is step out of bounds before crossing the goal line.  For the first of our snacking survival tips, what you want to pay particular attention to while watching your favorite team is your portion control. 

It’s easy to grab a bag of your favorite snack from the pantry and sit down on the couch and get consumed by the game – only to find your hand hit the bottom of the bag before halftime.  Ouch.  Party foul.  You can easily sit through a sporting event and devour multiple bags of snacks without thinking twice about it.  This will most certainly put you outside of your daily caloric intake and blow your macro ratios out of the water.

Instead, what you want to do is portion out the snacks you’re planning on having during the game.  Never take a full bag or container of anything with you and sit down without having a way of understanding how much you’ve consumed. 

In order to prevent overeating, grab yourself a plate or a bowl and dump in however many servings you want to eat.  Again, you want to work your snacks around your macros for the day.  While most snacks are generally carbohydrates, make sure you have a mix on your plate or bowl that also contains some healthy protein and fat options such as nuts or seeds.

Something else to consider is calling a timeout and tracking your food intake.  Yes, this can be a pain, but it can help prevent you from gaining weight.  The nice thing about apps like MyFitnessPal is that you can simply go into the app on your phone and input everything quickly without anyone knowing any different or having your buddies calling you out for being “that guy.”  It will look like you’re responding to an email or text.  Problem solved.

2.    Water Breaks Are a Good Idea

Second on our list of snacking survival tips deals with beverages.  Sunday sports, some relaxation, snacks, and a cold one (or a few) sounds like a great way to finish off the weekend, right?  And good for you, you work hard all week – go ahead and enjoy a couple of hours enjoying a game or two.  But what you want to pay close attention to is your liquid consumption. 

Related Article: Water Intake and Fat Loss. Why is it Important?

Alcoholic beverages are full of empty calories, and before you know it (especially if you’re hanging with your friends), one drink can turn into six in the blink of an eye.  While we aren’t going to throw the flag and call a penalty on your fun, you need to be aware that all of those calories add up and need to be accounted for. 

It would be wise to alternate your beverages.  Do a 1:1 ratio of alcoholic drinks to water.  After each beer or mixed drink, have a glass of water.  This will help keep your overall calories and carbohydrate count down while also helping to keep you hydrated.  You could use the same principle with soda if you prefer that over an adult beverage.  All of those sugars in soda can add up the calories quite quickly.

3.    Protein is Essential Pre-Game and Post

Elite athletes need protein to help their muscles effectively recover following not only games but workouts as well.  Next on our list of snacking survival tips is to ensure you rely heavily on protein at all times – just like your favorite professional athletes. 

Some common forms of protein you should look for when at home or a friend’s house watching the game are shrimp, nuts, seeds, hummus, beef jerky, turkey roll-ups, natural peanut butter, trail mix, and cheese, to name a few examples.

By including protein on your very first plate, all the way through to your last, you’ll not only have a useful macronutrient that can be used to aid in the recovery of your muscles, but protein is also very satiating, which means you won’t need to eat a ton of it in order to feel full.  

4.    Always Have a Game Plan

Just like any good coach goes into a game with some sort of plan, you should do the same with your snacking survival tips.  Scope out the opposition (the food) and decide your plan of attack.  Remember, focus on protein.

Once you do a once-over on the snack options, figure out what your best options are as well as a few items you plan on splurging on (but not going overboard with).  Then, grab yourself a plate or bowl and stick to the game plan.  If you find yourself straying away from the plan, pull yourself back in, regroup, and stay focused.  If you’re finding it hard to stay away from the treats, sit this one out, and go head over to the bench and steer clear of the food altogether.

Not having a plan will be disastrous as you’ll end up grabbing whatever looks good and filling your plate up multiple times – which is not a good idea. 

Maximize Digestion and Absorption

When it comes to snacking survival tips, you now have an unfair advantage – it’s basically like you’re cheating but it’s a totally legal play (unlike Deflategate).  You can call an audible by grabbing yourself some Evogen Nutrition Evolog, which can allow you to eat more carbohydrates with less worry about putting on body fat. 

Wait, what?  How?  It’s because Evolog is what’s known as a nutrient partitioning agent.  That means that you can break down food more efficiently and increase absorption by positively modulating insulin and blood glucose levels.

What this does is shuttle the carbohydrates you’ve consumed into the muscles rather than having them stored as body fat.  It almost seems unfair, no?  But it’s at your disposal and can help increase your muscle volume as well as aid in building the quality lean muscle mass you’ve been looking for.

Utilize these snacking survival tips from Evogen and be a part of the winning team!