All About Fiber

“You are what you eat.” And that’s true, in some ways. What we eat can help us have energy and stamina to do what we want to do, help us feel good, and help us live longer and healthier lives. On the flip side, what we eat can increase our risk of disease and injury, make us feel sluggish, affect our health in a variety of negative ways, and even keep us from doing the things we want to do. It can be tricky to eat a healthy diet and to make sure we’re eating enough protein, healthy fats, and healthy carbs and drinking enough water too. And then we also hear that we should be making sure we’re eating enough fiber-filled foods. It all can feel absolutely daunting! But…hear me out: Fiber, and consuming enough of it every day, is an important part of a healthy diet and a healthy body!

Why?

The Benefits of Fiber

Before we get into the benefits of fiber, here is some general information about fiber that’s helpful to understand. There are two different types of fiber, and these two types of fiber are often seen on food labels: Soluble and insoluble. The main difference between the two is that soluble binds with water and insoluble does not.

Soluble fiber slows digestion, which can help prevent sugar spikes, and it can also bind with fatty acids, which helps get them out of the body and lower bad cholesterol (LDL).

Insoluble fiber adds bulk to the stool and also helps food move more quickly through the stomach and intestines.This can prevent constipation.

Eating enough fiber has so many healthy benefits! Fiber can help to prevent…

• Breast, ovarian, colon, endometrial, and/or gastrointestinal cancer
• Heart disease
• Diverticulitis
• Hemorrhoids

Fiber can also do the following:

• Keep you regular
• Keep your bowel healthy
• Regulate cholesterol and lower heart disease risk
• Regulate blood sugar
• Help you feel fuller longer
• Help you maintain a healthy weight
• Lengthen your life

Fiber is pretty amazing, right?!

How much fiber should we be eating?

Since fiber is so good for us for so many reasons, here’s the question: How much fiber should we be eating every single day? Here are some great recommendations to aim for:

• Women: 25 grams/day
• Men: 38 grams/day

I can tell within a day if I didn’t eat enough fiber the day before. Seriously. Within ONE day. 😉

Tips for Eating More Fiber

If that daily fiber goal feels daunting and your daily fiber count is coming up short, here are some simple ways to help you add more fiber to your diet:

• Eat more fruits and vegetables
• Add lettuce/tomatoes/other vegetables to sandwiches
• Eat more nuts (sparingly!) and beans
• Eat high fiber cereals—add some fruit!

And this is a great tip that makes choosing fiber-rich foods super easy:

• Look for the 4 Ss in the foods you eat: Seeds, strings, stalks, and skins

If a food has one or more of these Ss, you’re good to go!

Here are some fiber amounts in common foods that can hopefully help you eat all that fiber every day:

Not sure which foods to buy at the grocery store to help you hit your daily fiber goal? Here are some general recommendations for choosing foods with a good fiber content:

• Cereal: 4+ grams per serving
• Breads: 1.5+ grams per serving
• Crackers: 2+ grams per serving
• Other foods: 1.5+ grams per serving

Still not sure how to get in all that daily fiber? This is my breakfast that I eat pretty much every single day, and it’s a great example of a fiber-filled meal, although this is definitely my most fiber-filled meal of the day. It starts my day out great with not only a healthy dose of fiber, but whole grains, healthy fats, yummy berries, and protein. Here’s the fiber breakdown:

• 3/4 cup bran flakes: 5.25g
• 1/2 cup frozen triple berries (thawed): 4.5g
• .3 ounces sliced almonds: 1.2g
• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk: 1g
• 1 scoop of my favorite chocolate protein powder + 8 ounces of water (Sometimes I even mix the protein powder with the almond milk and pour that over my cereal! Yum!): 0g
  Total: 11.95g of fiber

Are you a fiber lover like I am? Maybe not so much? If it’s the latter, try out one of these tips and see if you can up your fiber intake each day. If you’re also a fiber lover, what’s your favorite fiber-filled meal? Leave it in the comments below!