Homemade Energy Snack Balls

If any of you are like me, busy through the day running here and there. Many days you feel like you are out of control and when you are hungry so is your snacking a bit out of control. You wonder what can I do about this.

Maybe you are lucky and have an office that has snack food at the ready. I'm going to guess the snack food consists of cookies, crackers, chips basically anything in a package that was easy to order and is able to be left out for long periods of time without spoiling. I'm sure you already know that is the worst stuff for you to snack on. Right? Or maybe you are lucky and your company orders things like Cliff bars and things similar to those. OR maybe you are really lucky and your office has vegetables and hummus dip or peanut butter and fruit.

Most of us would agree it's easier to have these things readily available so we don't have to think about what we are snacking on. The veggies and such are obviously the healthiest choice of snack, with the cliff bar and their equivalent being the next best choice. Hopefully you would agree that the chips and such should be avoided on a daily basis.

So then what do you do when you don't have these at your finger tips? I have been playing with a few recipes on homemade no bake snacks. These snacks are higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates that their store bought equivalent and take about 30 minutes to prepare a batch of 6 servings.

You are probably wondering why I mentioned higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates. I mention that because many of the store bought snacks can be as high as 13:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. This is quite a high ratio even for someone who is doing an Ironman event of several hours. For the most part many Americans get more than enough carbohydrates in their normal american diets, but fall short in their protein intake, especially women. My goal with these snacks was to get this ratio closer to a 4:1 ratio for better nutritional balance.

What you need:
1 medium sized, medium to ripe Banana
5 TBSP Peanut butter or Almond butter
1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
1 TBSP Cinnamon
1/4 Cup Unsweetened Shredded Coconut
2 scoop (44 g) Vega Protein Smoothie Vanilla protein powder
1 Cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1/4 Cup Raisins, Blueberries or dried fruit of your choice

How Do You Do This No Bake Thing?
1. Mash the banana in a bowl, then mix in the nut butter. You can also use seed butter if you are allergic to nuts. If your nut/seed butter is quite dry, warm it up in the microwave to soften it, then mix it in with the mashed banana.

2. Next up add your Vanilla Extract, Shredded Coconut, Protein powder, and dried fruit. Mix these up well.

3. Last add the oats and mix well. If you find its too dry and the oats aren't sticking together, I added a tsp of water at a time until everything gently sticks together. Be careful not too add too much water as this will make the finished product too moist and sticky.

4. Use a tablespoon to scoop out the mixture and roll it into little balls. This recipe will give you 12 tablespoon size balls. Once they are all rolled up, place them in the refrigerator for 2 hours to set.

5. At this point you now have 6, two ball servings. They will last 3 days in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer.

Happy Snacking!

                                                     NUTRITION FACTS
                                                  SERVING SIZE 2 BALLS

                                    PEANUT BUTTER       ALMOND BUTTER 
CALORIES                             224                                     216
CARBOHYDRATES            25.5g                                    26g
FATS                                       9.5g                                    8.8g
PROTEIN                              10.5g                                    9.6g





 

Information Overload. How do you navigate it?

In this age of social media and advertising, do you ever find yourself overloaded with all the best ways to get fit or newest diet plans? Have you ever tried to look up the ins and outs of the plan in question and find yourself drowning in way too much information?

There is just so much information floating out there in cyber space. That's when it occurred to me; how does someone decide where to start, what to believe and how to apply it to them? We all have different reasons to start a health and fitness program. Just do a quick Google search on the topic that you are interested in and hundreds of pages of information will pop up.

Go Ahead. Try a search.

Open another screen, ask Google what you have been wondering about. Now you have hundreds of pages pop up with "answers" to your question. But, what do you do with all of that information? Is all that information relevant to you? How do you know if it is just someone's opinion, or is it tested with proper methods and results, and has been verified? Are those verified test results going to apply to you specifically?

Do you start with the first line on the page that pops up? Do you scroll down to the middle of the page, or do you go to the last page? We haven't been taught how to navigate this crazy amount of information that is at our finger tips in milliseconds. I want to help you with that.

Here is a little tip: In general the top half of the first page is going to be paid advertisements. SKIP those. Someone is paying for you to click on their product or service. Sometimes it's just to get more traffic on their site, sometimes if they get a click they get paid by one of their affiliates, and the rest of the time it's to get you to sign up for something or buy something. The way you know it's a paid advertisement, there will be a large bolded "AD" right next to the link to the website.

As you look down the page, read not only the main bolded title of the article, but also make note of the website. Is the website wikipedia, is it a fitness magazine, or is it someones blog or a medical article such as WebMD?

First, I look at the dates of publication. When was this article, web page, blog recently posted? I like to stay current, so I stay within the last 3 to 5 years. Then I look at the author. I look for the medical sites first, with my second choice being the blogger, and last the magazines and others.

I'm going to use the example of Keto diets since it's a hot topic today. Type in "Keto Diet beginner information". Look at the list on possible articles you can read. If the first few have the word AD next to them, skip on down a few entries.

The first one I came upon after the adds was this,  https://www.bulletproof.com/diet/keto/keto-diet-beginners-guide/. I noticed this was an article about the keto diet with lots of information on the do's and don'ts. This article is also hosted my the company BulletProof which sells products high in their proprietary fat complex. Right there that tells me even if they have good information in this article they are trying to sell me something and therefore will not be likely they have sussed out who the diet is best for. So I move on.

The next article on my page was, https://www.atkins.com/how-it-works/library/articles/how-to-start-a-keto-diet-7-tips-for-beginners. This article is hosted by Atkins, this group used to tout their diet years back and so they are going to have a specific bend to their info. Most likely they will try to lead you to their products or their way of doing keto, and try to get you to buy into a nutrition program lead by them. This article has a lot of information but the info is all general, meaning not specific to any one population. Let's move on again.

Next up was, https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto. This article though LONG, had embedded into it links to the peer reviewed journal articles where this writer got their information. Because of these links I would consider this a great article to read through and determine if the info in there applies to you. Click the links when needed to see if the subjects used in the studies reflect who you are, male/female, young/old, diabetic/non-diabetic, etc.

Those peer reviewed journals are where the real research and development starts. Once that research hits the streets is where it can lose it's credibility. People will try to apply it to EVERYONE. That doesn't always work. Why? Many times the subjects will ONLY be young healthy males. When I say young healthy males we are talking about men 18-23 with no health ailments.

How do you move forward if the study was done on only young males? Look for another article. Trust me there is SO MUCH being studied now that you will find something relevant to you. Don't give up, keep looking. Take your time, be diligent. And ask questions.

I hope this has helped you to have a better idea how to navigate the health and wellness articles so you can better choose the information that applies to you.

If you have an article or topic you would like help understanding, please feel free to leave a comment.