Ask Shannon: Fitness and Nutrition Q & A

Posted June 13, 2008 at 02:00 PM by Shannon Clark

Section: Her Health, Her Nutrition, Diet Myths, Healthy Eating

With years of training under her belt, resident fitness and nutrition expert Shannon Clark is ready to help you on your way to a healthy, informed lifestyle. Got a question? her your inquiries, and be sure to check back every week for the latest Q&A.

Q: Hi, I’m just wondering if you could offer me some advice with my diet.  With the summer just around the corner, all the seasonal produce is starting to come out – something that I just can’t resist.  I find myself snacking on fruit quite a bit throughout the day, but sometimes worry that this may deter me from losing weight.  I’ve read a few times that fruit should be avoided on a fat loss diet, but this is a hard thing for me to accept because I love it so much! I have a big sweet tooth and with all the different varieties right now, it’s hard not to indulge.

How bad is fruit for my weight loss diet?  Should I be closely monitoring how much I’m eating in order to have success?

A: Thanks for the question!  This is something that a lot of people deal with, especially when summer comes around.

Let’s look at where fruit fits into the picture of fat loss.

One thing to understand is that fruit, unlike other carbohydrate containing foods such as oatmeal, pasta, rice, and whole grain breads, is a mixture of glucose and fructose (the others are starch, which is then converted to glucose in the blood).  The issue with this is that fructose is going to be handled by the body slightly differently than pure glucose would be as it’s directed straight towards the liver, rather than into the blood stream.

This is both good and bad.  It’s good in the fact that it’s not going to give you as much of a rise in blood glucose levels, thus less insulin will be secreted, and you will not find you get as hungry as quickly after consuming a piece of fruit.

But, the bad news is that the liver can only store so much fructose at once, and then it will be immediately converted to fat.

This is one of the reasons why we are so often told to avoid any products that contain high-fructose corn syrup – because an overload of fructose is a surefire way to add additional body fat. 

Taken in the context of fruit though, the liver can store about 50 grams of fructose before you need to worry, so if you’re doing a good job at avoiding other high-fructose products, then this makes room for probably about 5-10 pieces of fruit per day (there are about 5-10 grams of fructose per fruit) – which is probably enough to cover your cravings.

As with any food though, you still definitely do need to take into account total calories, so be sure that in addition to watching the fructose in your diet, you’re also making enough room for the fruit calories elsewhere.

Fruit is generally quite low in calories so this shouldn’t be overly difficult, but it still is something you must pay attention to if you hope to achieve success on your diet.