Pay Attention to Portion Sizes: You CAN Have Too Much of a Good Thing

I have written repeatedly about portion control in relation to controlling one’s weight. Recently, I stumbled onto an instance of portion control in an area of eating healthy food, too. Hence this post.

I want to make clear that while we regulate the portions of our foods to control our weight, we also must pay attention to how much we are eating when it comes to healthy foods, too. For some reason there are people who think that they have to limit the amount of potato chips they eat, but they can have ALL the fresh fruit they want at one sitting. Not so.

Here is a healthy portion of watermelon. Eating a half of a watermelon is NOT healthy.

Last year I wrote about a person who was trying to substitute cherries for less healthy snacks. So he sat down and ate a pound at one sitting several days running. You can read the details in my post – Can cherries cause an upset stomach?

Sadly, I just learned of a similar instance of a guy doing that with watermelon. For the record, I love watermelon and eat some nearly every day of the year. It is a superb re-hydrator after a lengthy bike ride.

Here are some of my posts on watermelon:

How healthy is watermelon?
Dr. Oz on eating watermelon
Drinking a watermelon
Vita Mix Watermelon sorbet recipe

But, once again, you need to use your head about how much you consume. The example that spurred this post was a person who bragged that he loved watermelon and usually ate a HALF of one at a sitting.

Sorry, that is NOT healthy.

Livestrong said the following about that subject: “Even though watermelon is fat-free and low in calories, eating too much of it can interfere with weight loss and weight maintenance efforts. Dr. Melina Jampolis, CNN.com’s physician nutritionist specialist, recommends limiting yourself to three servings of fruit per day if you’re trying to lose weight. “While the sugar in fruit is healthier than refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup, it still contains the same number of calories per serving, so it cannot be consumed in unlimited quantities,” Jampolis says.

“Terese Scollard, registered dietitian and manager for Providence Nutrition Services, agrees. “If you go overboard on one kind of food, you’ll miss out on the valuable properties of other healthy foods.”

So, please keep your focus when it comes to eating – with everything you eat. It is not enough to just avoid the bad foods. It is healthy to eat fresh fruits, but don’t go overboard with what you consume at one sitting.

Tony