The bottom line is: If you live a mostly healthy lifestyle, one slice of pizza won't change that, and you'll only gain the weight of the pizza you consumed. However, if you have health issues — including heart disease, or high blood pressure — it's obviously best not to overindulge.
If you're relatively healthy, indulging in a slice of pepperoni pizza every once in a while will not (repeat: will NOT) kill you. It won't even affect your weight. In the short term, your weight will only increase by the actual weight of the pizza, according to Angelone.
You'll lose energy and probably feel sluggish.
For one thing, no one ever eats just one slice of pizza. The high fat and sodium content leaves you wanting more, but then you often feel too full afterward, and this can make you lose energy and feel groggy, sluggish, and unmotivated.
If you have two slices, it's not going to derail your progress, but swapping out one slice for a salad or other veggies could help stay satisfied longer — and save you extra fat and calories.
That depends on your overall diet and activity level. If you're eating a balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise, then a slice or two of pizza occasionally won't do any harm. But if you're eating pizza every day, or if you're eating more than three slices at a time, then you might want to cut back.
But since pizza is still a source of saturated fat (about five grams) and chock-full of sodium, limit it to once a week and load up on those veggies.
A large pizza usually contains eight slices, while an extra-large pizza contains around 10. Following the same rule that an average adult will eat around three slices, a large pizza will feed around two adults or four children.
A traditional piece of pizza is not nutrient dense, so it takes more slices to fill you up, which adds up in calories and sugar which can contribute to weight gain, says Zeitlin. With no fiber or protein, you have nothing to really fill you up and keep you full.
Pizza can be a healthy choice for many people. And yes, you can lose weight by eating pizza as long as you're eating it right! As surprising as it may sound, it's, in fact, true. You can have portion control, use selectively healthy vegetable toppings and make your pizza healthy.
Americans eat an average of 46 slices of pizza per person each year, according to MayoClinic.com. While pizza can be healthy if you make it the right way, most of the pizza you buy counts as junk food because of the high amount of refined carbohydrates, fat and sodium it contains.
“Choose thin crust versus thick crust or even stuffed crust to help reduce the total calories and sodium,” says Kimberlain. One slice of a small thin-crust pizza with no cheese has 141 calories and 282 mg sodium, according to the USDA.
Due to the amount of starches in traditional pizza, it takes about 6-8 hours to digest. So if you eat pizza for lunch, that heaviness can linger in your stomach for the rest of the day, often leading to gas and pain. Pizza is supposed to be comfort food, but it tends to do the opposite.
Can you eat pizza every week and still be healthy? Melissa Meier is the dietitian who will finally tell you that yes, pizza can be a part of an overall healthy diet (if you follow these parameters). Nothing beats a slice (or two or three or four...) of a delicious pizza.
The amount of pizza slices that can be considered too much depends on a variety of factors, including age and activity level. Generally speaking, an adult should consume no more than two or three slices per meal in order to maintain a healthy diet.
For many people following low calorie diets, “cheat meals” are a must. A cheat meal is essentially one planned meal (or meal deviation) a week where you can eat anything you want that you wouldn't normally eat as part of your diet — pizza, burger and fries, tacos, whatever you have a hankering for.
JOGGING: For regular runners, eating pizza once in a while won't harm them much. But if you have just started and still keep eating pizza because you feel hungry too soon, then it can affect your strength.
According to nutritionist Aanchal Sogani, pizza can be included in your weight loss diet, but you need to be mindful of portion sizes and the frequency of consumption. “One way to do this is to choose a smaller size of pizza or share it with someone else,” Sogani shared.
You could quickly gain weight
Given that a person should be consuming a diet of 2,000 calories on average, the plain slices add up to between 40 to 60% (or more!) of your daily calories—and that's without the other two meals and any snacks. Over-consuming calories regularly leads to weigh gain over time.
In general, she says all cooked foods and leftovers can be kept in the fridge for no more than three or four days. After that, they could start to spoil and contain bacteria. Jeremy White, editor-in-chief of Pizza Today, shares the same sentiments as Carothers. In fact, he says four days could be pushing it.
This is really a personal decision, as everyone has different needs and nutritional requirements. It can also depend on a variety of factors, such as what type of pizza you are eating and how hungry you are. Generally, the suggested serving size per person for pizza is one regular slice or two small slices.
How many slices of pizza is 500 calories? 500 calories is equal to around two slices of pizza, depending on how thick the crust and how much cheese and toppings are added. To ensure you're staying mindful of your calorie intake, it's important to keep an eye out for portion sizes.
A typical slice of thin-crust cheese pizza contains 191 calories. That's about 10% of the recommended daily calorie intake for an average adult. A single serving is considered to be one slice, and it provides roughly 8.9 grams of protein, 16.7 grams of carbohydrates, and 9.9 grams of fat.