Why YSK: fiber is important for optimal human health. It helps us avoid diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, obesity, and other diseases. This is particularly important in developed countries such as mine (USA) that are suffering greatly from these diseases.
The recommended daily fiber intake is 25g for women and 38g for men in the USA, and 95% of us don’t meet this amount. This suggests an urgent need for us to increase our daily fiber intake, which can be achieved by swapping out ultra-processed foods and animal foods that are void of fiber with whole plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.
As some people here already know since I talk about it endlessly, I have a weird medical condition where I have not eating solid foods in almost a year now. You have no idea how much fiber you need just to have decent bowel functions when you start at a base of zero.
I drink four cans of V8 and take 2 Metamucil capsules a day to get me up to about 30g. Still less than the recommended amount, but it’s all I can manage at the moment.
Before that, there were a couple of times when the constipation was so painful that I literally started yelling, “OH FUCK! OH FUCK! OH FUCK!”
🤣
25 GB per day? I don’t even HAVE fiber, I’m stuck with fucking Comcast, which might I add is down right now. Typical.
Do not jump straight to this fiber intake if you are eating way under it. Gradually alter your diet to meet it. You will experience some discomfort if you don’t.
You know that old saying an apple a day keeps the doctor away? Apples are a great source of fiber.
Fiber should be the principle and perhaps only macro nutrient most people interested in improving their health and weight should track. If you are consuming enough fiber, you are necessarily eating a large volume of healthy, calorie-poor food, and it becomes a challenge to overeat at all. Once you’ve got your fiber intake high enough you can basically eat anything you want in addition to that.
Well said!
i started being mindful of eating more fibre a year or so ago, and dear god it’s amazing to be able to just trust my bowels and barely ever have to think about type 2 toilet visits.
Love this!!
Finally, a pro-health justification for eating the whole container of oatmeal cookies.
This is purely anecdotal, but I started meal prepping with a pile of mixed vegetables and chicken, and my bowel movements have never been smoother. Like, the difference was legitimately addicting. Haha. An effortless shit everyday is such a massive game changer.
Thing is, I never have better shits than when I eat like absolute crap.
Hotdogs or a fry up, and it just flies out like a greased otter. Draw an ace every time.
When I go on a health kick and eat vegetables, it’s legit like wiping a marker pen.
the “when i go on a health kick” would be the problem, you kinda can’t “go on a health kick”, you don’t have a health bar that can be periodically topped up while otherwise eating garbage.
it’s much better to always eat one carrot per meal than to have one meal per week that consists solely of carrots, not only does that give your body a baseline to work with, but it also means you get used to eating that carrot and eventually you start to quite enjoy it, and the thought of not eating a carrot with your meal feels a bit wrong, and adding another carrot to each meal isn’t a very daunting prospect.
I used to subsist basically entirely on fast food, and at this point any meal without some proper vegetables feels somewhat unpalatable. I’ve also just straight up replaced candy with simply eating more food, and candy holds little appeal now. Why suck on a caramel when i can eat a tasty sandwich instead?
You’ve got to slowly ease yourself into a healthy lifestyle, and experiment around to find out what works for you. Maybe you love boiled vegetables, maybe you absolutely hate them but instead crispy fried ones herald the choirs of angels.
Here’s my unsolicited recipe for overnight oats, you sweet, fiber-deficient lemmies:
1/4 cup steel cut oats, 1 Tbsp chia seeds, a glob of honey, 1/8 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 3/4 cup of milk, then in the morning add 1/4 cup crushed walnuts and a ton of blueberries.
I hate when recipes mix units. How many cups are a ton?
I know, right? Let me help you out with that.
A ton is 907 kg approximately, and the weight of a cup of blueberries, while varying, is around 148 g or 0.148 kg.
That means the above recipe calls for around 6128 cups of blueberries. And at 3.6 g per cup of blueberries that’s ~22000 g of fiber or 628 times your recommended daily intake for men, or 880 for women!
I kind of feel like it would be a smidge too blueberry-y.
I once had a consultation with a surgeon about hemorrhoid surgery. Her recommendation was to use fiber supplements because it’s almost impossible to get enough fiber from food alone.
(I ended up getting a bidet, and now my fiber-poor garbage diet doesn’t cause that particular problem anymore )
I’m up to 70g of natural fiber a day! I’m plant-based though so it’s easy for me when most of my foods are whole plant foods.
polished grains are a terrible curse upon humanity, just switching them out for whole grain is such an easy boost to your health. Not just more fibre, but more vitamins and stuff too along with proportionally less simple carbs!
Hell yeah!!!
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