Dietary Fiber
Here is the 95th in our series of 100 Weight Loss Tips articles. Each new article brings you a brand new top tip on how to successfully lose weight.
So the last tip was all about counting calories and knowing your limits. Well, this one is all about an important addition to your diet that you really should include every day. That addition is called dietary fiber.
If you don't know what dietary fiber is, then here's some background and info that'll help you understand not only what it is, but why you need it.
What is Dietary Fiber?
Dietary fiber is basically course food that passes through the digestive system and helps to clean out the colon, in a nutshell.
Fiber stimulates muscles in the intestines to further metabolize food and break it down into easily passed waste material. It is an important part of your diet and if you don't get enough of it every day, you can suffer with constipation and this can lead on to many related diseases of the large intestine from polyps, IBS, a whole range of digestive problems, weight gain, Crohn's disease, plus far more serious conditions such as colon cancer.
So you can see how important it is to include a range of foods in your daily diet that provide sufficient dietary fiber to ensure your digestive system is working in tip top condition.
Fiber is contained in the following foods:
- bran
- wholewheat based cereals
- wholemeal or wholegrain bread
- wholemeal pasta
- fresh fruit
- fresh vegetables
- porridge (oats)
- nuts and seeds
Meat and Dairy
Incidentally, there is almost no fiber to be found in meat or dairy products, so if that's all you eat, you will need to make some serious changes. In fact a diet composed almost exclusively of meat and dairy, junk or fast food with no fresh vegetables, fruit or cereals is asking for serious trouble on the health front.
A staggering statistic is that the average American is walking around with fully 7 pounds of undigested red meat in their colon, through lack of fiber in their diet. is it any wonder that obesity is becoming an almost epidemic in the US?
When you embark on a quick weight loss program and start to lose stored fat, chances are you're going to suffer with constipation, especially if you allow yourself to partially dehydrate by not drinking enough water. It happens rather more frequently than many of us care to admit as well as share with others.
All About Health
For this reason, you should make sure you get a good amount of dietary fiber every day. It's so important to your health as well as your weight loss goals.
When you have plenty of fiber in your daily diet, losing weight becomes a much easier thing to accomplish because your metabolism will be far better stimulated and make digestion of your food that much more efficient. This basically means that you will store far less fat in the body, leading to weight loss.
Having too little fiber in your diet has the opposite effect, causing your metabolism to become sluggish meaning your digestion is less efficient and more fat is stored in the body.
So you can clearly see that not just from a health point of view but also from a weight loss point of view, it really does pay to make sure you include plenty of dietary fiber in your daily food allowance and make sure you stick with it every day!
Weight loss tips number 94 will follow in the next post!
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Posted on Sat, 13 Jun 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 0 Comments