8 Reasons You Should Eat More Fiber
You may associate fiber with improving your digestive health, keeping you regular, and preventing constipation. But eating or taking fiber regularly can also help you lose weight, lower your cholesterol, improve your gut health, and much more. Three cheers for fiber!
Luckily, fiber is found in a lot of different foods (maybe some you didn’t even realize!), and getting enough fiber in your diet has never been easier.
What is Dietary Fiber?
Dietary fiber is the part of plant-based foods your body can't digest or absorb. Instead, it passes mostly intact through and out of your body. Fiber comes in two types: insoluble and soluble, and both are beneficial to your health in different ways:
- Soluble Fiber attracts water and transforms it into a gel-like lining during the digestion process. It binds with fatty acids and prolongs the stomach-emptying stage that helps you stay full longer by slowing digestion. Soluble fiber can be found in oat bran, barley, nuts, seed, legumes, and beans.
- Insoluble Fiber helps food pass quickly through your intestines by adding more bulk. It also controls the pH level in your body. Insoluble fiber can be found in a variety of foods, such as wheat bran, whole grains, vegetables, soy, and fruits.
How does this support your overall health? Fiber is essential to a healthy diet and lifestyle. Here are just some of the amazing benefits of eating more fiber.
8 Health Benefits of Eating More Fiber
- Lose belly fat: Too much belly fat is linked to heart disease, Type 2 Diabetes, and stroke. Eating more fiber - specifically soluble fiber - can help you lose belly fat by suppressing your appetite and increasing the diversity of bacteria in your gut, which can lower your risk of obesity.
- Increase your regularity: Constipation is an unfortunately common GI complaint. And, well, it’s not very fun. Eating more fiber can aid in the digestion process by softening and bulking up your stool, making it easier to pass.
- Improve your gut health: A high-fiber diet improves the health of the gut by ensuring a healthy population of microflora. Fiber feeds the flora (i.e. the trillions of bacteria living in your gut), which are responsible for breaking down food, among many other amazing functions.
- Lower your cholesterol: Soluble fiber binds to cholesterol particles, helping them pass through and out of the body instead of absorbing into the bloodstream.
- Lower your blood sugar, and reduce the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes: Fiber slows down digestion which helps control the rate at which sugar is absorbed into the blood. And since obesity increases your chance of developing Type 2 Diabetes, fiber helps lower that risk. Fiber can also help control blood sugar levels if you have Diabetes.
- Detox your body, naturally: Who needs a juice cleanse? Detox naturally by increasing your fiber intake. Fiber helps scrub and naturally eliminate toxins from your G.I. tract.
- Lower your risk for heart disease: Research has shown the importance of fiber in lowering blood pressure as well as blood cholesterol levels, which reduces your risk of developing Heart Disease.
- Live longer: In case you need more reasons to up your fiber intake, some studies have shown that consuming 25g-30g of fiber a day can even increase your lifespan.
How to Get More Fiber in your Diet
Fiber can be found in many fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. But if you’re worried you aren’t getting enough fiber, consider adding an all-natural fiber supplement to your diet.
Natura fiber is entirely natural, and made from five plant-based, organic ingredients rich in fiber and other healthy goodness:
Whether you’re trying to lose belly fat or are simply seeking to improve the way your body processes the food you eat, adding fiber-rich natura fiber into your diet can help you achieve and maintain the healthy weight your body deserves.