Are you getting enough?

Most modern diets are deficient in fiber. In fact, it’s estimated that only 5% of adults consume the recommended amount. But are the rest of us at least getting close? Not likely.

Studies estimate that US children and adults are getting less than half of the recommended amount of fiber each day. This has huge health implications and is one of the reasons why a majority of people eating the standard american diet suffer from chronic diseases like obesity or diabetes. *, *

It’s recommended that people consume at least 14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories they consume. This ‘per calorie’ recommendation accounts for different sizes, ages, and energy intakes of different people to make sure fiber intake is adequate. By that math, the average adult who eats around 2,000 calories a day should aim for at least 28 grams of fiber.*

A bodybuilder who consumes 5,000 calories a day would need to increase fiber intake to 70 grams a day to make sure they are getting the fiber necessary to promote the health of their digestive system, keep cholesterol in check, and balance inflammation.

Calculate your needs:

An easy way to calculate your fiber requirement is to start with your daily calorie intake goal. If you don’t have a goal, look at your food log and use an average of your daily calorie consumption. If you have no idea how much you eat, you could assume 2,000–2,500. Then calculate 14 grams for every 1,000 calories by multiplying the calories by 0.014.

For example, if you are a woman who usually eats 1600 calories a day, your recommended fiber goal would be:

1,600 calories × 0.014 = 22.4 grams of fiber

This person should aim to get at least 22 grams of fiber per day. However, many experts agree that going slightly above this number is associated with even greater health benefits. 22 grams of fiber should be her minimum daily goal. *

Tracking Fiber:

Looking back on your food log (if you are on Gyroscope Food XRAY or on the Coaching program) can help you determine if you’re reaching your fiber goals by showing the total daily intake in your trends. You can also look at your meal grades to see if your grades for food processing are high or low.

Because of the innumerable health benefits of fiber, fiber content plays a big role in determining the health grade of your meals. If you’re consistently receiving poor meal grades, especially in the categories of “processing” or “blood sugar balance” you’re likely not getting enough fiber and too much of your nutrition is coming from more refined and processed foods.

There is so much to learn about utilizing fiber to benefit your health! Let’s dive into the science of fiber, why you might want to increase your consumption, and how to do it in a way that’s most beneficial (and less likely to cause digestive upset).

The In’s and Out’s of Fiber

Fiber includes a wide variety of indigestible plant materials, including polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, and resistant starch to name a few. To simplify things, fiber is usually classified into two groups: “soluble” and “insoluble” fiber, referring to their solubility in water.

These two categories help distinguish their physical properties, but also describe how they benefit your body.

Soluble Fiber

Soluble fiber forms a gel-like substance when it dissolves in water. This viscous gel interferes with the uptake of sugar and fat particles into the bloodstream to prevent blood glucose spikes and improve blood cholesterol levels.

Soluble fiber is fermentable, so it plays an important role in feeding your beneficial gut bacteria. Because your microbiome can use soluble fiber as a substrate to create things like vitamins and healthy fats, this fiber does provide a small, but very beneficial source of calories. *

Insoluble Fiber

Sometimes referred to as “roughage,” insoluble fiber remains unchanged as passes through your digestive system. It doesn’t form a gel with water, but it does attract water into your stools to keep them soft and provides bulk to promote bowel health and regularity.

Insoluble fiber also helps slow the uptake of sugar into the bloodstream, which helps prevent glucose spikes similar to insouble fiber. This type of fiber doesn't ferment in your lower intestine, so it provides no calories and can be subtracted from your “net calories” from carbohydrates. *

Your Body on Fiber

To fully understand the amazing benefits associated with eating fiber, it can help to learn more about how fiber interacts with various parts of your digestive system. Knowing the exact mechanisms fiber uses to support your health can help you make better food choices to fit your specific goals, and fully understand why to make fiber a priority in your diet.

Let’s take a look at what happens to fiber as it travels through your digestive system. The first step is putting something in your mouth and chewing. After that, it ends up in your...

Stomach

Prevents Overeating: The presence of fiber in your meal helps your stomach feel full for many hours after eating. All that undigestible plant material requires extra chewing, churning in your stomach, and stretches “fullness receptors” in your stomach lining; all factors that contribute to the feeling of satiety, without providing extra calories!

As discussed in the “Hunger & Satiety” guide, there are many signals and hormones that add up to ultimately determine whether you feel hungry or full. The stretch receptors in your stomach are one of them. Adding fiber to each meal will help your body self-manage and eat the correct amount, even without relying on a calorie tracking app to tell you exactly how much you’re “allowed” to eat or other much more complex approaches.

Filling up on high fiber foods like cabbage, beans, whole grains, whole fruits, and vegetables is a weight management strategy known as “volumetrics.”

It enables you to eat more volume, but fewer calories to prevent overeating and weight gain. Making more high-fiber food choices may not be the only thing you need to change to achieve a healthy weight, but it definitely helps. In fact, it’s well established that higher fiber intake is directly associated with having a lower body weight *

Easier Weight Loss Because of its effects on satiety, fiber can be an incredible weight loss tool.

A recent 2019 study of 345 participants showed that fiber intake promotes weight loss and improved diet adherence in overweight and obese adults who were consuming a calorie-restricted diet, independent of their macronutrient and calorie intake! **

Fights Heartburn: Fiber acts as a digestive aid. It improves gut motility, absorbs excess stomach acid, and improves gastroesophageal sphincter motility and stomach pressure to combat disorders like acid reflux or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). *

Small intestine

After your stomach, food continues to your small intestine. The primary function of your small intestine is to absorb nutrients from the food your stomach broke into small, digestible pieces. Since fiber isn’t digested or absorbed into your bloodstream, it slows with the absorption of other nutrients — especially fat and sugar. At first slowing digestion and getting in the way may sound like a bad thing, but in fact a slow and gradual delivery of these nutrients is important and expected. Since your blood is a shared resource and workspace for your entire body, quickly changing it is not ideal.

Sustained Energy: The presence of both soluble and insoluble fiber dilutes glucose molecules found within your intestine. This reduces the rate at which sugar comes in contact with the lining of your small intestine, reducing the rate at which it’s absorbed into your bloodstream.

If the absorption of sugar is slower, you have a longer, sustained source of energy (glucose) entering the bloodstream at moderate amounts. This is your body’s preferred method of obtaining energy, slow and steady. Your body likes to keep glucose concentrations between 70–140 mg/dl, enough to power your muscles, brain, and other organs, but not too highly concentrated that sugar can damage your blood vessels and tissues.

Reducing Diabetes Risk Another benefit of fiber’s interference with glucose absorption is the prevention of large glucose spikes. When you consume a highly concentrated source of sugar such as soda or dessert without fiber, glucose enters the bloodstream too quickly. This triggers a large insulin response, telling your body’s cells to draw sugar out of the blood quickly to prevent a dangerously high blood sugar concentration. If this process happens often, you can develop insulin resistance, which is why fiber is effective at reducing your risk of type 2 diabetes. *

Limits cravings and crashes: A really high blood sugar concentration causes a sharper insulin response to pull sugar out of the bloodstream more quickly, a safety mechanism to protect your blood vessels from damage. When sugar is pulled out quickly, blood sugar levels later dip too low and you experience lower energy levels, carbohydrate cravings, and other unwanted side effects.

The glucose graph (if you have your continuous glucose monitor connected to Gyroscope) then looks like a roller coaster. While roller coasters can be fun, when it comes to your blood levels a steady and flat level is optimal and will feel much better.

Improves heart health: Another benefit of fiber’s ability to slow absorption is the role of binding and excreting cholesterol. When gelled, soluble fiber is bound to fat molecules, and impedes their absorption into your bloodstream. Fiber shuttles fats through your digestive system to be lost through your stool instead of being easily absorbed into your body. This helps lower serum cholesterol levels, (especially of harmful LDL-cholesterol), improves blood pressure, and lowers inflammation, reducing your risk of developing cardiovascular disease. **

More on Cholesterol:

Many people struggle with high total cholesterol levels, or a high LDL-cholesterol to HDL-cholesterol ratio. Eating no cholesterol is not necessarily the solution. Eating more soluble fiber is one method you can use to reduce total and LDL-cholesterol levels in the body and achieve healthier blood lipid balance. Moreover, increasing fiber is an intervention that comes with many other useful benefits (as mentioned above), unlike prescription cholesterol-lowering medications that often come with unwanted side effects.

Studies have shown that consuming more soluble fiber can reduce total and LDL cholesterol levels by about 5-10 percent!

Adding any fiber helps, but the particular type of fiber that seems to have the most beneficial effect on lowering cholesterol levels includes medium-to-high molecular weight soluble fibers — like beta-glucans, pectins, and gums. Food sources that are high in these include: whole oats, whole barley, legumes, peas, beans, flax seeds, apples, and citrus fruits. *

Large intestine

After the small intestine comes the large intestine. Many of the ”bathroom” benefits usually associated with fiber originate from its role in the large intestine. As fiber moves past the small intestine and into the large intestine (the final stage of digestion) a few more important benefits can be found.

Digestive Disease Reduction: Fiber increases the water content in your stool. This provides bulk, and softens stools to prevent constipation, hemorrhoids, diverticulitis, and even colon cancer. The presence of fiber in your stools also dilutes fecal carcinogens and decreases transit time, reducing the contact your intestinal walls have with the harmful compounds that promote cancer development. ***

Fiber & your Gut Microbiome

Many types of fiber act as “prebiotics,” meaning they are fermented by your beneficial gut microflora to provide benefits to your body. This is not to be confused with probiotics, which are fermented foods that supply sources of beneficial bacteria (such as bifidobacterium found in yogurt). Eating both probiotics and prebiotics together can improve your gut health, but most people agree that providing fermentable, prebiotic fiber to the colony of bacteria that already reside within your gut might be more beneficial to the health of your microbiome than the intake of probiotics themselves. Prebiotics “feed” or “fertilize” your beneficial gut bacteria, which then enable them to:

• improve absorption of minerals like calcium
• enhance digestion and metabolism
• produce short-chain fatty acids
• produce important gut hormones
• improve immune function
• reduce risk of allergy
• improve gut PH and permeability
• lower inflammation

Some of the most popular prebiotic fibers include inulin, oligofructose, lactulose, and resistant starch.* These can be found in foods such as whole-grain wheat, bananas, onions, garlic, green leafy vegetables, soybeans, psyllium, and artichokes.* Interestingly, one of the starches found in human breast milk, human milk oligosaccharide (HMO), is a very powerful prebiotic, nourishing a healthy microbiome for your baby right off the bat! ***

Better Moods

You may think what happens in your stomach or intestines has no impact on your brain, but studies have shown a strong connection between the two. An important benefit of a healthy gut microbiome is the reduction it has on depressive symptoms! The connection between your gut microbiome and your brain is called the “gut-brain axis.” It enables your microbiome and central nervous system to influence each other.

For example, stress can negatively affect the composition of our gut microbiota, while a healthy gut microbiota can improve your central nervous system’s response to stress, depression, and anxiety. How does one get a healthy gut microbiome? This is where a healthy, high-fiber diet comes in.

Eating prebiotic fibers is thought to benefit mood in a variety of ways, including mitigating inflammation and increasing the production of certain important feel-good neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin. **

How to (safely) increase fiber?

You may have tried increasing fiber in the past and experienced some unwanted side effects like bloating, gas, or digestive discomfort. Increasing fiber doesn’t have to be miserable. In fact, if you do it right, you will start noticing benefits immediately rather than pain. To increase fiber intake painlessly, follow these two rules:

1. Increase fiber in small increments. Overloading your body with too much fiber at once can cause bloating and discomfort. Instead, build up your tolerance to fiber slowly. Add one or two fiber-rich foods per meal and space it throughout the day so you build up fiber content over the course of a few weeks.

For example, if you usually eat buttered toast and eggs for your first meal of the day, try adding avocado in place of the butter or swapping the refined bread for whole grain. Don’t go “all-in” and change to a whole grain bread, add some beans to your eggs, and top it off with a side of blackberries. Like all changes, make sure you give your digestive system and microbiome ample time to adapt to your new fiber intake.

2. Drink more water. Both soluble and insoluble fibers r*equire water* to work their best, so drinking extra water is important to help you adapt to a change in fiber content.

Instead of drinking one big glass with a high-fiber meal, you should try to drink plenty of water throughout the day.

It can take 30-40 hours for fiber to pass entirely through your digestive system, and water is required throughout the process. Regularly consuming extra water while increasing fiber content will ensure that stools stay soft, and digestive discomfort is avoided.

Fiber-rich Foods

Beans, peas, whole grains, seeds (especially chia and flax seeds), nuts, and certain fruits and vegetables are great sources of fiber (both soluble and insoluble). Here are a few examples of high-fiber foods that can help you meet your total fiber requirement each day.

• 1/2 cup cooked navy beans | 9.5g
• 1/2 cup wheat bran | 8.8g
• 1/2 cup cooked split peas | 8.1g
• 1/2 cup cooked black beans | 7.5g
• One cooked, whole artichoke | 6.5g
• 1/2 cup cooked chickpeas | 6.3g
• 1 Tbsp chia seeds | 4.9g
• 1/2 cup raspberries or blackberries | 4.0g
• One cooked, skinless sweet potato | 3.9g
• 1/2 cup dried dates or figs | 3.7g
• 1 oz raw almonds | 3.3g
• One raw apple, with skin | 3.3g
• 1/2 cup cooked whole-wheat spaghetti | 3.1g

Easy Fiber-boosting Tips

Choose “whole”: The easiest way to eat more fiber is to choose “whole” foods over “processed” foods. Processing methods strip food of its fiber. For example, white bread contains 0-1g of fiber, while whole wheat bread contains 3g per slice.

Pasta, refined breakfast cereal, fruit juice, and canned fruits are all lower in fiber than their fresh or whole-grain counterparts. Enriched foods and flours might have B-vitamins or iron added back in after processing, but not the fiber.

Eat more Legumes: Beans, lentils, and peas are nutritious, cheap, and extremely high in fiber. Using more legumes in your meals is a great way to maximize fiber. Add pinto beans to a breakfast burrito, kidney beans to a salad, or chickpeas to a stir fry. You can even try a black bean burger or lentil stew. Legumes are extremely versatile and will provide both soluble and insoluble fiber to keep you healthy!

Read the Labels: The fiber content of grain products like bread, breakfast cereals, English muffins, pasta, and pitas, can vary greatly. Always consult the nutrition facts panel to choose products that contain the most fiber per serving. Look for words like “100% whole grain” or “bran” on the package to steer you in the right direction.

Add Color: Eating at least 5 servings of colorful fruits and vegetables each day can help you reach your fiber intake, especially if you can eat multiple, edible parts of the plant, such as apple skins, raspberry seeds, or pea pods.

Try to add a wide variety of plants such as leafy greens, broccoli, pears, beets, even tropical fruits like guava or mango to increase fiber. Using these colorful foods to boost your fiber intake will benefit you in other ways as well. Fruits and vegetables contain powerful antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols to help you feel great and fight disease.

Dried fruits are a concentrated source of fiber, but also a concentrated source of sugar. Eating dried fruits like prunes, dried apricots, dates, and raisins can help you increase fiber content, but make sure they are eaten sparingly to avoid excess sugar.

Cooking and Baking Tips: While you are cooking or baking, you can easily increase the fiber content of your meals by making a few higher fiber swaps or additions: For example:

• Substitute half of the flour for whole wheat flour or some ground oats
• Substitute half of the ground beef in recipes for beans
• Instead of cheese on a wrap or sandwich, use avocado or hummus
• Add ground flaxseeds mixed with water in place of eggs when baking muffins or bread
• Add chia seeds to oatmeal, yogurt, or other foods. You can even make your own fiber-rich jam by blending your favorite berries with chia seeds and a touch of honey
• Instead of ice cream, try “nice cream” a blend of frozen bananas and peanut butter

What about Fiber Supplements?

Many fiber supplements are derived from very fibrous plants such as psyllium husk (Metamucil or konsyl), methylcellulose (Citrucel), inulin, or chicory root. There is no evidence that these fibers cause any long-term harm. However, when you are relying on a supplement instead of real food to reach a goal, you can be missing out on a lot of powerful nutrition that comes from whole foods. In general, it is best to rely on whole foods for most of your nutrition and use supplements simply as a supplemental boost.

As mentioned before, healthy foods like beans, fruit, and whole grains contain many vitamins and minerals like iron or vitamin C, which are important for the proper function of your body. Many darkly pigmented plants like black beans or blueberries contain polyphenols and antioxidants that fight disease and lower inflammation in the body through various pathways... something that a fiber supplement just can't do. Trying to replace all the vitamins and nutrients in whole foods with pills would require taking hundreds of pills for each meal, an expensive and extremely complex undertaking.

Furthermore, foods that are marketed as fiber supplements like bars or shakes can contain really high concentrations of plant fibers (especially inulin and chicory root fibers), which can cause gassiness and digestive discomfort in some people.

Fiber For You

Do you have a specific health goal in mind or ailment you are focused on? Increasing intake of fiber can benefit your body in a myriad of ways.

Let’s bring all the science of fiber and your physiology together to help you discover the best way to utilize fiber to help you reach your goals:

Reduce Constipation: Prioritize water first, “bulking” insoluble fiber second, and prebiotic fibers next. Drinking enough water is key. It doesn't matter how much fiber you eat, if water intake is inadequate.

Next, focus on eating sources of insoluble fiber like bran or beans to add bulk to your stool. This will ensure the water gets into your stool and stays there to improve motility and elimination. Lastly, adding prebiotic fibers to fuel your gut bacteria will further improve stool bulk and consistency.

When soluble fiber is fermented, it produces short-chain fatty acids which increase stool weight and decrease constipation. This is why prune juice is a triple threat for treating constipation. It provides water, cellulose (insoluble fiber), and pectins (soluble fiber) all in one package. There is also evidence that prunes contain a phenol that exerts a laxative effect by stimulating beneficial gut bacteria. *

Lose more Fat: Filling up on low-sugar, low-calorie sources of fiber like legumes, vegetables, and whole grains is a great weight loss strategy. These foods are great foods for promoting weight loss, and fill you up much better than low-fiber foods like refined grains or processed snacks. But not all high fiber foods are equal in their ability to reduce calorie intake.

Relying on higher sugar and calorie foods like dried fruit, nuts, and avocados may not be the best strategy for losing fat. These are healthy foods that are great in small portions, but shouldn’t make up the bulk of your diet if weight loss is your goal. Instead, fill up your plate with cruciferous vegetables (like kale, cabbage, Brussel’s sprouts, and cauliflower), leafy greens (spinach or swiss chard), root vegetables (like potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, beets) and legumes (beans and lentils). Since these foods are high in fiber and water, they are some of the most effective foods for achieving weight loss while still feeling full and satisfied.

Reduce Heart Disease Risk: Soluble fiber is the fiber you want to focus on for heart health. This type of fiber will lower cholesterol and improve blood pressure to improve the health of your cardiovascular system. Eating at least 4 servings of high-soluble fiber foods (foods that contain about 2g of soluble fiber each) each day is associated with a reduction in heart disease risk. The following foods contain 2 grams of soluble fiber or more:

• 1/2 cup black beans (and most other beans)
• 1 cup cooked oatmeal
• 2 Tbsp flaxseeds
• 1/2 cup cooked Brussel's sprouts
• 1 large orange

It turns out there’s some truth to the old poem “beans, beans they’re good for your heart...” If you want to reduce heart disease risk by increasing fiber, eating more beans could be a simple way to begin! **

Reduce Type 2 Diabetes Risk: All types of fiber help reduce diabetes risk because they help slow the uptake of sugar into your bloodstream. In fact, simply eating more fiber is one of the best things you can do to keep from developing this disease.

Studies have shown that people with the highest fiber intake tend to have the lowest risk of type 2 diabetes. Fiber from vegetables, whole grains, beans, fruit, nuts and seeds are all associated with diabetes risk reduction. Remember that fiber-rich foods are only one part of a healthy diet. If you want to reduce diabetes risk, make sure you’re balancing your plate with high-quality proteins, and also healthy fats (like salmon, almonds, greek yogurt, etc.) ***

Reduce Depression While the exact mechanism of how fiber improves depressive symptoms is not fully understood, studies show a higher fiber intake is associated with a lower risk of depression. *

Prebiotic fibers are most associated with benefiting moods and treating mood disorder symptoms, since they are the ones used by your gut microbiome. Your microbiome is theorized to improve mood disorders in two ways — first by modifying genes that increase certain neurotransmitters (like serotonin) and second, by modifying the pH and permeability of the gut to lower inflammation.

Most studies agree that getting above 3 grams of prebiotic fibers each day will confer these benefits. This can be met by eating foods such as wheat, onions, garlic, asparagus, artichokes, leeks and bananas at least twice a day.***

In summary

Fiber is a powerful tool for preventing disease and promoting optimal health. Many types of fiber are beneficial, and you should diversify your fiber sources to take advantage of the different benefits they provide. Remember to increase your fiber content slowly, over time, and with plenty of water.

Remember the main function of soluble fiber is to provide fuel for gut bacteria, while insoluble fiber helps to keep your entire digestive system moving smoothly. By altering your intake of these different types of fiber, you might find you are able to reach your health goals more easily.

Popular Soluble fiber sources:

• Beans — 2-2.5g soluble fiber (1/2 cup)
• Flaxseeds — 2.0g soluble fiber (2 Tbsp)
• Orange — 2g soluble fiber (1 medium)
• Rolled Oats — 2g soluble fiber (3/4 cup cooked)
• Lentils — 1.7g soluble fiber (2/3 cup cooked)

Some Insoluble fiber sources:

• Lentils — 8.7g insoluble fiber (2/3 cup cooked)
• Beans — 3.2-5.4g insoluble fiber (1/2 cup cooked)
• Barley — 5.4g insoluble fiber (1/2 cup cooked)
• Pear — 4.1g insoluble fiber (1 medium, with skin)
• Baked potato — 3.3g insoluble fiber (1 medium, with skin)

Regardless of your exact health goal, making your daily fiber target a priority will benefit many areas of your health. If you’re looking for the most straightforward way to increase your fiber intake, just eat more whole foods (and limit your intake of processed foods).

Eating a diet without processed foods, the metrics will generally take care of themselves. If your fiber numbers still seem low, try incorporating a few of your favorite items from the soluble and insoluble lists above, and don’t forget to increase your hydration as well!