Are you interested in eating a high fiber diet because you’ve heard it’s healthy? Have you ever wondered why we think fiber is healthy? What does the evidence show?

If fiber is so healthy for us, why isn’t it an essential nutrient? Furthermore, how much fiber are we talking?

We have an avalanche of data showing that eating more fiber decreases our risk for many common diseases. Things such as:

• Cardiovascular disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Obesity
• Constipation
• Depression
• Colon and other types of Cancer

On top of all this, a study from 2015 found that each 10g of fiber consumed per day decreases all-cause mortality risk by 11%. So if you eat 90g of fiber per day, you’ll never die. Oops, that’s not how that works.

Regardless, based on all the data we have, there’s fairly strong evidence that eating more fiber will make most people healthier. Therefore, you may want to increase your fiber intake.

Is it essential to life? No. But it does seem to make people healthier when they consume more of it.

But what is fiber and what are the different types. How does fiber improve our health? Which foods have fiber? Finally, what are strategies we can use to increase the fiber in our diet?

In today’s video blog, we cover the basics of fiber.

How to eat a high fiber diet

Increasing your fiber intake is fairly simple to do. And the best part is, you don’t have to completely remove large swaths of food to increase your fiber intake. You can add more fiber to any type of diet.

But, it’s important to understand that most people don’t eat anywhere near the fiber recommendations. In fact, most people eat less that half what is recommended.

It’s not in your best interest to just double your fiber intake. For many, it’s important to work up slowly. Increasing fiber too quickly can cause gas or bloating, or if not accompanied with an increase in water intake, constipation.

Additionally, as you’ll learn in the video, we don’t break down or absorb fiber. In order to maximize the benefits of a high fiber diet, you need the microbes that break down fiber. Their metabolites are doing a lot of the legwork.

At the end of today’s video we give you tips to transition to a high fiber diet. We’ll discuss what to add to your diet to increase these microbes. We’ll also chat about special considerations such as increasing water intake and selecting fiber types that are less likely to cause bloating.

By the end of today’s video, you’ll be armed with the knowledge to get the most out of a high fiber diet.

Enjoy!

Time for the show…

(00:00) Intro

(01:26) What is fiber and what are the types of fiber?

(02:50) Why eat a high fiber diet?

(5:26) How fiber works to keep us healthy

(9:52) High fiber foods

(14:17)Properly transitioning to a high fiber diet