The Facts of Fiber

"One good thing to add to any diet is fiber"....this is what weight loss systems promote all the time, and it is absolutely true.  Fiber has so many nutritional benefits, but it usually gets a bad wrap as tasting like river gravel.  Fiber is found in so many foods that you might not even think of, which raises the question of what is fiber?

Fiber is any part of a plant that your body can't digest.  When you eat a food rich in carbohydrates or protein your body can break it down and absorb it; fiber does not work this way which is why it is so beneficial for digestion.  There are two kinds of fiber: soluble and insoluble.  Soluble fiber dissolves in water and can help lower cholesterol and blood sugar levels.  The consumption of soluble fiber slows down the absorption of sugar from the foods you eat and this leads to healthy blood sugar levels.  Spikes in blood glucose levels that come from foods high in sugar fall rapidly which makes you feel hungry sooner, then this leads to overeating so you feel full.  Soluble fiber can be found in oats, peas, beans, apples, and citrus fruits.

Insoluble fiber cannot dissolve in water so it moves through your digestive system faster and cleanses everything out.  The faster food moves through your body also helps in signaling that you're full sooner and then you won't over eat.  Whole-wheat flour, wheat bran, nuts, beans and vegetables; like cauliflower, green beans and potatoes, are good sources of insoluble fiber. Another perk of high fiber foods is that if you're eating something like granola it typically takes some time to chew, this delay helps your body process that you're full before you think you are.   Many foods like oatmeal and beans have soluble and insoluble fiber, the levels of each just depend on the part of the plant that product comes from.  Side note...if you buy the delicious sounding oatmeal packs I can pretty much  guarantee you it's loaded with sugar and there goes all the healthiness.  Try to get a plain oatmeal and add fruit to it, or look for ones that advertise being lower in sugar.

Granola is also a good source of fiber, but the thing to be careful with in store bought granola is that it's high in sugar and fat.  This is the case with any food, so just be careful that you don't get suckered in by the granola that have raisins and other things in it because these typically are higher in additives which cuts down the nutritional benefits.  Fiber is also what makes brown rice a better choice than white rice; the only real difference between the two is that brown rice still contains the husk.  The husk is where essentially all the nutritional value is.  

So there you have it, fiber can be more than bran flakes in the morning.  Not only does it make you feel fuller and help in weight loss, but you get the added bonus of low blood sugar and lower cholesterol.  Now everyone go out and stock up on oatmeal, fruits, and beans!

The "Magic Diet"

One of the biggest issues I faced when I was starting out on my journey was how to change my diet; I had heard of Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, South Beach, the list went on and on.  The common theme in all of these was that you could still eat the foods you loved, but they had the solution for helping you keep everything you were eating well balanced.  For me though, I didn't want to spend the time (or money) that went along with keeping track of how many points a food was worth.  It seemed a lot simpler to just eat less of the bad stuff and more of the good stuff; I know that to anyone who has ever tried dieting this sounds ridiculously oversimplified, but if you think back to when you started dieting, wasn't this essentially what you did?

My biggest pet peeve is when I hear about a diet that is "all juice for a week and then you drop ten pounds" or, my personal favorite, "the Special K Diet".  Now I have nothing against Special K products, I eat the granola and pastry crisps all the time, but here's the question you need to ask yourself about sticking to one diet: what happens when you start eating real food again? Great, you just ate Special K products for breakfast, lunch, and your in-between snacks for two weeks and you dropped a jean size....but what happens when you go back to eating other things for breakfast, lunch, and your in-between snacks? It doesn't even have to be bad food that you go back to, anything different is going to be a shock to your system and the weight that you just dropped is going to come back twice as fast.  The key that I've found to dieting is to be realistic.

It took me an extremely long time to realize that eating a cookie wasn't going to make me gain twenty pounds overnight.  As long as you do things in moderation you'll see results, simple as that.  It's okay to have a piece of birthday cake at the party, just cut out having ice cream along side.  Don't sacrifice the donuts you look forward to every Friday at breakfast, just have ONE instead of three.  Try replacing a milkshake with a fruit smoothie.  Doing these simple things and trying to do some form of exercise at least three times a week will give results, I promise.

Weight loss is a combination of a good diet and exercise.  Even the simplest change counts as exercise; one thing my sister does is use the steps at work instead of the elevator.  Go use the second floor bathroom instead of the first.  While exercise is a key part of weight loss, it's not a miracle worker.  If you go for a three mile run and then get home and eat potato chips all night, everything you just did is ruined; you'll be at a stalemate for years this way.  Find a system of diet and exercise that works for you and is easy to manage and you'll start to feel way better about yourself.