One important thing that most of us don’t get in our diets is fiber. We tend to eat way too many processed foods, which have much of the natural fiber removed. Fiber is a key factor in weight loss.
Fiber is just the part of plant foods that passes through your body without being absorbed. It is sometimes informally known as bulk or roughage. Fiber is important for your body for several reasons. It helps with digestion. Your body uses fiber to help itself eliminate waste. Fiber can also help prevent certain diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer.
Fiber makes you feel fuller without adding calories to your diet. High-fiber foods leave you more satisfied after eating a given amount of food, and this makes it easier to stick with your weight loss plan. Fiber is a type of carbohydrate, so it does contain calories, but since they aren’t absorbed into your body, the calories or carb grams don’t count. In other words, if you are tracking your intake of those things, you can ignore the part from fiber.
New food labeling laws in the United States require the grams of fiber per serving to be listed, so it’s easy to tell how much fiber you are getting. Get in the habit of reading the labels before buying food, since foods that may seem high in fiber might not be, due to the manufacturer’s processing methods.
Some foods that are naturally high in fiber are beans, peas, lentils, nuts, whole wheat, flaxseed, oats, and barley. High-fiber fruits and vegetables include plums, prunes, berries, potatoes, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, and zucchini. It is often the skin or husk that has the most fiber.
You can also add fiber to your diet by adding high-fiber ingredients such as bran or psyllium seed husk to other foods. You should try to get at least 25 grams of fiber per day, regardless of whether you are trying to lose weight, and odds are that right now you probably aren’t eating enough fiber.
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