Fruits and fructose

Dazzlle22 · November 2019

I've been wondering, how much fruit is too much?
They are low in calories and very nutritious too, but can you go overboard with them?
My daily calorie intake is 1800 and for the past 3 days I overate on fruits and exceeded my daily calorie intake by 100-450 calories (and sugar and carb intake by +150 grams), will this binge-eating on healthy food cause you to gain weight/fat?

corinasue1143 · November 2019

If you eat enough of any food, healthy or not, to make your calorie input more than your calories burned, you will gain weight.
In your case, you most likely ate enough calories to seriously slow down your weight loss, but maybe not enough to totally stop it.
How much is too much fruit? That’s a matter of opinion. My opinion is when it crowds out other healthy foods that your body needs, like healthy proteins and fats. That is, unless you have another reason to restrict sugar, like diabetes.

cwolfman13 · November 2019

Dazzlle22 wrote: »

I've been wondering, how much fruit is too much?
They are low in calories and very nutritious too, but can you go overboard with them?
My daily calorie intake is 1800 and for the past 3 days I overate on fruits and exceeded my daily calorie intake by 100-450 calories (and sugar and carb intake by +150 grams), will this binge-eating on healthy food cause you to gain weight/fat?

Weight management is about calories. To achieve your weight management objectives you need to eat the calories required to meet those objectives. If you eat over maintenance calories, you're going to gain weight/fat regardless of those foods being healthy.

It's not about a food being healthy...or carbs...or sugar. It's about calories where weight management is concerned. Personally, I eat a heavily plant based diet, so my carbs are always high...but I put a premium on vegetables over fruit. I only have a couple servings of fruit per day usually. I eat a lot of vegetables, legumes, lentils, potatoes and sweet potatoes and other root vegetables, whole grains, etc...and one or two servings of fruit.

nytrifisoul · November 2019

You definitely don't want to binge on fruit. I am supposed to be on a low carb diet (doctors advice) and my favorite fruit (frozen mango) has 21g of carbs in just 1 cup. Just to compare, same amount of cheerios have the same amount of carbs.

Terytha · November 2019

A calorie is a calorie. Going over maintenance by 100-450 on any calories regardless of source on a regular basis will cause you to gain weight.

Carb intake only matters if you're keto or diabetic.

MikePTY · November 2019

There is no such thing as a "healthy" or "unhealthy" calorie. A calorie from fruit counts just as much as a calorie from a Big Mac. So eating over your maintenance will cause you to gain weight, no matter how you do it. However, you daily calorie goal, if you are trying to lose weight, already has a deficit built in. For example, if you told MFP that you want to lose 1 pound a week, there is a 500 calorie a day deficit built into your 1800 calories. That means that if you go over that by 100-450 a day, you will not gain weight. You will just lose weight more slowly. You would need to eat more than 500 calories over your goal to be in a surplus to gain weight (outside of normal weight fluctuations).

MikePTY · November 2019

nytrifisoul wrote: »

You definitely don't want to binge on fruit. I am supposed to be on a low carb diet (doctors advice) and my favorite fruit (frozen mango) has 21g of carbs in just 1 cup. Just to compare, same amount of cheerios have the same amount of carbs.

Do you need to be on a low carb diet for a specific medical condition, or do you think you need it just for weight loss? Because you do not need to eat low carb for weight loss. It is all about calories.

While binging on anything to the point of a calorie surplus is bad, it is a lot harder to do it with fruit than many other foods, as it is less calorie dense. Mango, which is one of the more calorie dense fruits, has around 105 calories in 1 cup, which is 165 grams. Meanwhile, just 28 grams of cheetos has 160 calories. So they are not nearly comparable. By weight, cheetos have almost 10 times the calories as mangoes.

nytrifisoul · November 2019

MikePTY wrote: »

Do you need to be on a low carb diet for a specific medical condition, or do you think you need it just for weight loss? Because you do not need to eat low carb for weight loss. It is all about calories.

While binging on anything to the point of a calorie surplus is bad, it is a lot harder to do it with fruit than many other foods, as it is less calorie dense. Mango, which is one of the more calorie dense fruits, has around 105 calories in 1 cup, which is 165 grams. Meanwhile, just 28 grams of cheetos has 160 calories. So they are not nearly comparable. By weight, cheetos have almost 10 times the calories as mangoes.

Medical condition. And i know carbs have nothing to do with weight loss (although the keto ppl seem to think so) im a firm CICO believer. I just was using an example (although not great) that fruit is not always healthy, and in my case would put me at my daily limit if i was doing keto ( i am not, and never would do keto)

/rant

AnnPT77 · November 2019

corinasue1143 wrote: »

If you eat enough of any food, healthy or not, to make your calorie input more than your calories burned, you will gain weight.
In your case, you most likely ate enough calories to seriously slow down your weight loss, but maybe not enough to totally stop it.
How much is too much fruit? That’s a matter of opinion. My opinion is when it crowds out other healthy foods that your body needs, like healthy proteins and fats. That is, unless you have another reason to restrict sugar, like diabetes.

This ^^^.

Lots of fruit is fine, as long as it:

(1) doesn't result in calorie levels that interfere with your weight goals,
(2) doesn't drive out other necessary nutrition, chiefly protein and healthy fats, but possibly certain micronutrients that are in veggies and such,
(3) doesn't cause, um, digestive tract distress, and
(4) doesn't aggravate any medical conditions you may have.

#1 is the only one that matters for weight management (especially in the short run), #2 is about health, body composition, satiation and energy level (the latter two of which can affect the practicalities of weight loss in the long run), and #3&4 are just part of being a sensible adult.

The healthfulness of a food has little effect on weight management, especially in the short run. Furthermore, healthfulness of any given food is all about dosage and context: Since in your case fruit is pushing you over your calorie goal, and (probably) resulting in getting too little protein or fats, some of that fruit is technically unhealthful, in my view.

Fruits and fructose

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