{"id":15572,"date":"2014-11-12T13:54:22","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T18:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/caloriecontrol.org\/what-does-moderation-have-to-do-with-healthy-eating\/"},"modified":"2017-05-30T10:55:25","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T14:55:25","slug":"what-does-moderation-have-to-do-with-healthy-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caloriecontrol.org\/what-does-moderation-have-to-do-with-healthy-eating\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does Moderation Have to Do with Healthy Eating?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

As a registered dietitian, I\u2019ve been trained to encourage people to eat in moderation. Sounds reasonable, doesn\u2019t it? So, well, er \u2026 moderate. I was feeling pretty smug about the moderation message until recently when someone threw down a tweeted gauntlet.<\/p>\n

What IS moderation?<\/em><\/h2>\n

There it was. The tweet was challenging me to define a very subjective term \u2013 and in no more than 140 characters! I thought for a moment and tweeted in reply: \u201cModeration is eating less than you\u2019d like of the foods you like!\u201d<\/p>\n

OK, I know my somewhat smarty-pants tweet didn\u2019t really answer the question, but I will try to do that now that I have much more space to post a response.<\/p>\n

Moderation is Personal<\/h2>\n

Dietary and caloric needs vary from person to person which means that what is moderate intake for one person can be excessive or inadequate for another person. The first step to define moderation for you is to determine your recommended target intakes for grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, and protein as well as the total number of calories you should consume each day. An easy way to do this is to go to the USDA\u2019s SuperTracker<\/a> site.<\/p>\n

After you create a profile and enter in your age, height, weight, gender, and physical activity level, the site will give you a personal plan that shows your daily food group targets including what and how many servings to eat within your calorie allowance. Then you can enter what you\u2019re actually eating each day in Food Tracker to see where you stand. Are you getting enough vegetable servings each day? Are you getting too many grain servings? How about total calories?<\/p>\n

Easy Changes You Can Make<\/h2>\n

Using this site, you can also see if you\u2019re overeating one or more of the macronutrients \u2014 proteins, fats, or carbohydrates \u2014 by generating a Nutrients Report. Calories from proteins should be 10-35%, from fats 20-35%, and from carbs 45-65% of your total recommended calories.<\/p>\n

If you regularly exceed the recommended percentage of carbs<\/strong>:<\/p>\n