As I mentioned previously in one of my 7 Quick Takes Friday posts, I’m currently training to teach at Ultimate Pilates Plano! All of us new trainers had the opportunity to do 3 days of training this weekend, working on the machines off and on the entire time. That is a LOT of working out, especially with the butt-kicking capacity of the Megaformer machine. A lot of calories I would burn! So obviously, I would need to bring snacks.

I am not a huge fan of nutrition bars because they tend to have a lot of really long unpronounceable ingredients, including corn syrups and sometimes even trans fats. I prefer to stick to ingredients I can recognize as much as possible – close to the natural state of food. I also wanted to keep the disposable packaging to a minimum, although I did have to use some plastic bags and wrap.

I thought about it all week and this is the variety of less processed snacks that I ended up putting together for a full day of working out:

Here’s the breakdown:

1. OK so this is the most processed food – crackers. I needed them because I typically need some carbs in the mornings. These are whole wheat without corn syrup or hydrogenated oils. You can find crackers like this without engineered ingredients at natural food stores. If you really want to be natural, you can go with seed crackers but I have found that actually those do not fill me up enough.
2. Organic grapes and snap peas
3. Carrot slices and hummus
4. A seed, oat, and dried fruit “energy bar”. I buy these at Costco, actually. All the ingredients are things you could find in your pantry.
5. Hard boiled egg
6. Little piece of cheese
7. Peanut butter oat protein balls (recipe here)
8. Honey roasted peanuts (to combine both sweet and salty!)