healthy carb snack for weight loss & blood sugar regulation

When you’re hungry and you can feel your blood sugar drop, it can seem like an emergency, and sometimes it is. I used to carry a fruit and nut bar for times when I’m hungry, feel dizzy, and won’t be home for awhile. One of my friends used to carry a bag of skittles in her purse. Other people, I’ve spoken to, get chips from 7-11 or a vending machine. Many of my clients, stop at the nearest fast food restaurant for a quick meal when they’re starving.

When you need a small snack to tide you over when your blood sugar dips, all of the options above are not ideal because high-calorie junk food is not what you need. You need fast-acting carbohydrates from whole foods that don’t contain a lot of calories, but just enough to tide you over for about 30 minutes so you have time to get a healthy meal.

That perfect food is figs. What I love about figs is that they don’t need to be refrigerated, I can carry a few in my gym bag or purse in a small sealable plastic sandwich bag, they’re easy to eat, they are low in calories with just enough carbs, and they taste like candy. One fig is just 7 net carbs, not too low and not too high. Sometimes, I’ll need two figs to stabilize by blood sugar, which is imperative for a type 1 diabetic like myself. The reason why I switched from the fruit and nut bars to figs, is that I couldn’t resist eating the entire bar, so I was eating too many carbs and too many calories (bar: 220 calories vs 1 fig 37 calories, 2 figs 74 calories). Figs are also a wonderful snack to satisfy a sugar craving, without the guilt.