When Healthy Foods Backfire

By Rachel Grumman Bender for YouBeauty.com

Are you a former ice cream addict? Have you learned to drive right by a fast food drive-through?

It’s not exactly shocking that these eating habits put your health in harm’s way -- not to mention, cause you to pack on the pounds. So dropping those bad habits like a hot potato (with full-fat sour cream, naturally) and swapping them out for more virtuous foods like fruits and whole grains must guarantee good health, right? Well, it depends.

Turns out, when eaten in excess, healthy foods can turn against you.

“In our Lifestyle 180 Program [the wellness program at the Cleveland Clinic], when people come back for a six-month follow up and are struggling with maintaining the weight they’ve lost, 90 percent of time they were eating horrible foods and now they’re eating healthy foods but are having too much of it,” says Kristin Kirkpatrick, R.D., YouBeauty Nutrition Expert and wellness manager at the Cleveland Clinic. “You can have the best intentions, but unless it’s a non-starchy vegetable, you can have too much of a good thing.”

In other words, even good-for-you eats can’t protect you if you triple the portion sizes or douse them in sugar. Here’s how you can still get the beauty-boosting benefits of six popular healthy foods without wrecking your diet or harming your health.