London - Experts have identified three times of the day when dieters need to be most on their guard against succumbing to a calorie-filled treat.
Known collectively as “Snack O’Clock”, research shows that the crucial moments fall at 11.01am, 3.14pm and 9.31pm.
Over these three periods dieters can wolf down as many as 750 calories in total - wrecking their attempts to fight the flab.
Researchers found that skipping breakfast is the first mistake many dieters make. They get too hungry to wait for lunch, which is why 11.01am is the first danger point. At 3.14pm, office staff often seek a pick-me-up to combat work-related stress and help them over the post-lunch slump.
And at 9.31pm – roughly an hour before bedtime for many people – a hot drink in front of the TV is more often than not accompanied by fat- or sugar-filled snacks.
Lee Smith of Forza Supplements, which ordered the study, said: ‘We are all becoming much more knowledgeable about nutrition and how to eat more healthily at traditional meal-times. It is at other vulnerable moments during the day – these Snack O’Clocks – when all the damage is done in diets. All the good work at meal times is undone.’
The same research also singled out coffee shops as a major danger to slimmers because of all the tempting muffins, pastries and sugary drinks on offer. Mr Smith warned: “They are like sweet shops to a child, offering all sorts of seemingly innocuous pleasures like lattes which are the enemies of good diets. It is pointless coming to work with a low-fat salad in a Tupperware box if you are going to pop out to a coffee shop and wreck all that good work.”
The study comes after it was revealed that some coffee shop drinks contain as many as 25 teaspoons of sugar. Action on Sugar said that if warning labels were compulsory then 98 percent of the 131 hot flavoured drinks sold at the high street coffee chains would require a “red” rating for excessive levels of sugar.
Nutritionists also say dieters should opt out of hot-drink rounds at work because it puts them under peer pressure to consume unnecessary calories with colleagues.
Daily Mail