Why Planning Your Snacks Is The Easiest Hack You Aren’t Using In Your Health Journey.
If you want to improve your nutrition, there are a few things that will immediately help you feel more dialed in:
Plan out your meals - this will set you up so you know what will work for your goals - you’ve shopped for it and know what the menu for each day is.
Want to dial it in even more?
Plan out your meals and do some meal prep so the food you planned to have is ready for you when you are ready for it.
Okay…even more?
Pre-track your food portions in your tracking app so you know where your nutrition is coming from and what it will look like for the day as a whole.
Want to DIAL IN - DIAL IN?
You’ve planned, you’ve done some meal prep, you’ve pre-tracked it, and have portioned it out into containers for the week so there is no guesswork, no questions, no decisions to make.
And that’s where most people stop. They have put in a ton of thought into how their meals will support their goals, and think - “I’m doing all the things - I’ve got this!”
But you know what happens almost every time? They eat those meals, they follow those meals exactly…but then between meals, they want a snack.
Snacks often become a chaotic tornado of whatever sounds good when they’re bored, overwhelmed, emotional, stressed, underfed, or just… snacky. And honestly? That matters more than people think. If you have mapped out all your meals - if they are super intentional, but your snacks are REACTIVE (picking whatever you have within reach or whatever your brain or taste buds are telling you to reach for) - you are not lacking willpower…but you may be lacking systems to help you stick to what will ultimately work best for you.
And when people come to me talking about how they eat “so healthy” and tell me about all their healthy balanced meals - but that they keep “falling off” with nutrition - snacks are usually the first place I look.
Because snacks aren’t just random extras in your day, they aren’t treats when you feel like you just want something sweet, they aren’t something to curb your boredom…they are PART OF THE PLAN - just like your meals are. Just like your steps, and exercise are. Or at least, they should be. If you have goals that are centered around improving your health, energy, increasing protein, building muscle, body composition changes, changing your relationship with food, creating positive changes in your food choices - snacks matter.
And snacking isn’t bad. But treating snack time like those calories “don’t count” is probably getting in the way of your goals. And just like tracking your nutrition - portioning out your snacks or tracking them isn’t forever - but by doing this, it does give you insight on what snacking CAN look like when it is based around the same nutrition ideals that you have for your meals.
Intentionally planned out snacks are what help stop that reactive eating. Planning, prepping, and pre-tracking your snacks (just like your meals) removes decision-making during the week. It lowers the stress of overconsumption and creates an easier path toward the nutrition plan you actually want to follow.
This is why I love snack packs so much for clients. They reduce the decisions during the week.
Imagine this: You take less than 5 minutes to prep a week of snacks, you sort them into one ziplock back for each day, enter them into MacrosFirst ahead of time, and now - on Monday - you just grab Monday’s snack pack bag and you’re good to go!
Those snacks already:
fit your goals
fit your calories/macros
contain foods you actually enjoy
and remove the constant “what should I eat?” spiral
You can have sweet options, savory options, high protein choices, different textures, different flavors, maybe a sweet treat in there…Hell, you can even build your snack packs first and then build your meals around them if you want. The goal here isn’t perfection. The goal is to eliminate as many unnecessary decisions as possible during the week so things feel just a little bit easier.
When you’re building snack packs, I think one of the best questions you can ask yourself is: “What do I actually want my snacks to achieve?”
Do you want them to:
boost protein?
help keep you full between meals?
support energy before workouts?
satisfy your sweet tooth?
increase fiber?
prevent nighttime overeating?
For me personally, when I build snack packs, I usually try to:
get at least 20g of protein
include some fiber
keep fats a bit lower so my meals can contain more of them
keep them under about 350 calories so meals stay my primary source of calories
But honestly? The bigger priority for me is that the snack packs make my life easier.
My goal as a coach - and the goal I hope for with all my clients - is to create systems that help you simplify your meals & snacks without compromising the bigger goals. It’s creating systems and routines that give you time & energy into your week. It’s to UNCOMPLICATE what nutrition looks like. It’s spending less than an hour every week to plan out meals, meal prep, create snack packs, and pre-track so that during the week, all you need to do…is eat.
TIME given back
LESS dishes during the week
ZERO decisions around whether or not it will fit your macros
THIS IS THE GOAL!
And if this kind of practical, real-life approach to nutrition resonates with you… this is exactly the kind of thing we work through inside coaching. We learn how to create systems that help you elevate your life, improve your health, give you BACK your time, and feel your best. And I don’t know about you - but that sounds pretty spectacular.
Head to IG (@hannahj28) and check out my reel where I create a batch of snack packs for the week - then give me a follow for more tips like this!