Lets talk about fibre.
Having gone through the main macronutrients of protein, fats and carbohydrates in other blogs, we’re now going to look at a subdivision today which is fibre.
Fibre is non-digestible or you could think of it as a complex carbohydrate. It can be broken down into two different categories, so we have -
Soluble fibre - This is viscous or ‘sticky’ and this is kind of like gooey gel in the gut that helps to bind to cholesterol. Often you’ll hear that people have too high cholesterol, well this can help to actually lower it. These are foods such as nuts, seeds, oats, lentils, beans and some fruit and vegetables
Insoluble fibre - This is a fibre that is insoluble so it doesn’t really mix with water and this can be if you think of your ‘roughage’ or your ‘bulk’ within your digestive system. These are foods such as wholemeal grains, cereals, some skins of vegetables and fruits. This fibre can also help to keep you more regular.
When it comes to the amount of dietary fibre, in 2015 the UK government raised it’s recommendations to 30 grams per day for adults which is a good overall arching guide for most of us, however, if we want to get a little bit more individual we can aim for 14 grams per 1000 calorie intake because if we say 30 grams but you’re only eating 1,500 calories that could be quite a lot of fibre to get in, however on the flip side if you’re eating 4,000 calories a day because you are training lots and your expending lots of energy then 30 grams might not be quite enough. It can also be quite interesting sometimes to have a little look if you do record your food intake of where your fibre intake is. It’s often quite linked to the quality of our diet because we’ll find in a lot of processed foods and in a lot of what we’d consider as ‘junk food’ is often very low in fibre, however, lots of those more natural, minimally processed foods are going to be naturally higher in fibre so you could take a look at where you’re at and see if you or/and your trainer can help to get you towards that 25-30 grams per day.
Health benefits of fibre
Why should we strive for it?
So I’ve said to try to get to 25-30 grams of fibre a day but what are the actual benefits?
This has been studied quite extensively and it has been found that dietary fibre reduces the risk of developing the following diseases -
Coronary heart disease
Strokes
Hypertension (high blood pressure)
Diabetes
Obesity and certain gastrointestinal disorders
It can improve blood sugar control in Diabetics
It promotes regularity so within going to the bathroom. Some people lacking in fibre tend to not be able to go as regularly as they want to
It can aid in weight loss because it keeps you fuller for longer and as mentioned before, it can provide some bulk to your food
It decreases transit time so the longer your food substances are in your digestive tract, the longer that you’ve got to absorb or extract nutrients and calories from them, however if you increase that transit time then you might actually decrease the amount of food that is actually digested and then you don’t take in as many calories
It can decrease energy density so think of high amounts of the volume of food for low calories
It reduces energy intake as we can’t really break it down and so at best you might get 2 calories per gram of fibre compared to normally 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate
Getting more fibre - How can we get more?
As we know fibre has a multitude of health and weight loss benefits and the following can be done and help -
Increase/eat more fruit and vegetables - As always you haven’t got to be perfect, you’ve just got to be better so if you currently don’t eat any fruit and vegetables then maybe now is the time to start working on those habits to get one or two portions per day. If you’re eating up to three or four then maybe let’s try to push towards six
Look for more whole-grain cereals (check the labels)
Shoot for 30 grams or roughly 14 grams per 1,000 calories per day
So this has now come to the end of this blog about fibre and this was all a very brief look into the fibre itself.