If you’re currently on a weight loss program, how hungry are you throughout the day? How often does the person who is helping you check your daily dietary fiber intake? What does that person recommend for you to do with dietary fiber?
A Quick Roadmap for Your Convenience
Before we begin, this is a one-of-three part informative packet about dietary fiber designed and created for you. Yes, dietary fiber is so important that it deserves three separate blog posts!
The dietary fiber informative packet will be broken up as follows:
- Basic Terms (Overview)
- Soluble Fiber Deep Dive
- Insoluble Fiber Deep Dive
Understanding the role dietary fiber plays in your effective weight loss program is a crucial tool in your weight loss tool belt to help you better understand how food affects your body in a common sense way that will put you in control of how you look.
Dietary fiber is not only an essential part of a weight loss program, but an essential part of your overall diet during every season of your life.
Dietary fiber does a heck of a lot more than you may have been taught
In previous blog posts we have used the building of a house as the metaphorical theme for building a weight loss program. We discussed how your Metabolic Snapshot (Click, scroll down, wait for the pop-up) is your weight loss program’s solid foundation, and your Big Rocks are the foods that bring you the most joy and make up the frame that is built upon that solid foundation. Additionally, we went over what the major macronutrients are and how to interpret a food label.
You may now think of dietary fiber as the walls of that beautiful home you are building.
The walls of your home allow you to be comfortable and away from the harshness of the outside elements. Similarly, dietary fiber helps lessen the feeling of the hunger pangs that are inevitably going to come during an effective weight loss program and keep you more comfortable during your weight loss program’s entirety.
If you’re currently using a professional to guide your weight loss efforts and dietary fiber is not a key part of the solution, you could be in more pain than is necessary
Just as the rain and wind beat on a home, you’re going to be hungry during an effective weight loss program, that’s a fact you just can’t avoid. However, if you’re not getting enough dietary fiber on a daily basis those hunger pangs can get pretty severe and will slowly erode, and eventually destroy, your weight loss program. If you want some quick tips and information on dietary fiber that will help keep you from being outrageously hungry on your weight loss plan, keep reading!
What role does dietary fiber play helping you with your hunger pangs?
Without going too far into the weeds (that’s what those dietary fiber deep dives are for), dietary fiber does many great things for your body, but we will just stick to its role in keeping you full in this blog post.
1. Fiber takes longer to pass through the digestive tract
This helps keep you fuller, longer. Portioning out your fiber throughout the day with your meals and drinking water around those meals will help you stay full throughout your day.
*If you are using one of the Cornerstone Weight Loss Professionals to help you better understand how food affects you body in a common sense way in order to take control of how you look, we’ll suggest your individual water intake to be based on your weight, lifestyle, and activity level because you deserve a program tailored to your unique situation.
2. Dietary Fiber draws-in the water you drink and adds volume where you need it most during your weight loss program.
The physical bulk of the material in your digestive tract aids in keeping you full, and eating fibrous foods throughout the day in conjunction with drinking water gives you more bang for your buck.
Imagine eating 50 calories worth of broccoli versus eating 50 calories worth of sugar. Though the calories are equal, the broccoli yields 4g of fiber whereas the sugar yields 0g of fiber. Aside from the obvious micronutrient benefits the broccoli brings with it, it will also add more physical volume to your digestive tract than would the sugar.
3. Generally speaking, fibrous foods cause you to chew more and can be more mentally satiating than their non-fibrous counterparts.
Going back to the broccoli/sugar analogy, 50 calories worth of broccoli is about 150g of physical food, whereas 50 calories worth of sugar is about 13g of physical food! Physically chewing aids in helping tone down the brain’s hunger signals, which is huge during the many hunger challenges you’ll inevitably face during an effective weight loss program.
As you are seeing, dietary fiber not only helps with physical hunger, but the mental hunger signals that inevitably come during an effective weight loss program. So how much fiber do we need?
According to the Mayo Clinic, “Women should try to eat at least 21 to 25 grams of fiber a day, while men should aim for 30 to 38 grams a day.”
We agree.
What’s next?
As you read in the beginning of this blog post, this is the first and most basic portion of a three-part informational packet on dietary fiber created for your benefit. The upcoming two parts will consist of more detailed information on differences, similarities, and benefits of dietary fiber. The information in this article, as well as the upcoming deep dives, are essential to help you better understand how food affects your body in a common sense way that will put you in control of how you look.
If you’re currently working with someone who is helping you with your weight loss program and dietary fiber has not been discussed, it may keep you from potential stumbling blocks to have a discussion about it. If you’re currently looking for a solution to your weight problems and are worried that you may waste money and time with the wrong people, it seems like considering a professional would be a good idea.
In order to get in touch with a professional who can help tailor your weight loss plan to you, click below, fill out the information, and a member of the Cornerstone Weight Loss team will reach out to you to get the results in weight loss you deserve.