Can You Eat Too Many Vegetables?

If you’ve been doing some reading about diet advice, one thing that you’ve likely heard time and time again is that you need to be eating more vegetables. Vegetables are one of the healthiest foods that you could consume, without question and most people don’t get in enough with their everyday diet.
That said, is there a limit to how many vegetables you should be eating? Is there such a thing as ‘too much’ when it comes to vegetables? Or is it a case where the more you can eat, the better?
Most people would jump to the conclusion that there really is no way you could ever eat too many vegetables, but you might just be surprised.
Let’s look at some things to consider.
Dietary Fiber Overload
The very first issue that may present itself if you go a little too crazy with your vegetable intake is an overload of dietary fiber. While you should be working to increase your fiber intake in your diet as fiber is one nutrient that helps you feel fuller and promotes a healthy digestive system, if you load up on too much fiber too quickly, it can cause gastrointestinal distress to occur.
When adding fiber to your diet, you should do so gradually, adding only 5 grams or so every few days until you’re at your target fiber intake.
Overload yourself and you’ll definitely be feeling it.
Difficulty Taking In Adequate Calories And Nutrients
The next issue that may come with consuming so many vegetables is that you could start to have some difficulty getting in adequate calories and other important nutrients that your body needs. Since vegetables do tend to fill you up quickly and provide hardly any calories, if you’re eating copious amounts, this means you’ll have less room for other calorie-dense foods.
While vegetables are chalk full of important nutrients that you need, they aren’t going to supply certain nutrients such as iron, larger amounts of calcium, and so on.
Balance is required in the diet and this comes from a mix of vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats.
Bloat
Finally, the last issue that can occur if you start increasing your dosage of vegetables just a little too dramatically is extreme stomach bloat. Bloating is both uncomfortable and unattractive as it will make it seem as though you’ve instantly gained weight.
Since fiber does take up bulk in the body, it’s going to sit in the digestive track for some time while it’s processed, increasing the total space of the lower intestine and stomach.
If you’re looking to get as lean as possible, vegetables are important but you do need to be careful you don’t overdo things.
So there you have a few situations where you can suffer negative results from over-consuming vegetables. You definitely don’t want to leave vegetables out of your plan, but do adjust your intake so it’s at an appropriate level.