Why does getting enough fiber in your diet have a bigger impact on weight than counting calories?
TL;DR: Getting enough fiber from foods reduces inflammation, allowing us to store less of our food as fat and meet our fitness/health goals faster. Without fiber, multiple organs get stressed out, inflammation increases, and our liver + fat cells get signals to store glucose as fat (instead of glycogen or new muscle growth). (about 5 min read)
Metabolic tips for reducing inflammation by getting enough fiber:
Build your meals around fiber + protein first.
“See the seeds”: When you do eat refined carbohydrates (aka processed grains like cereal, crackers, breads), choose options that have visible whole grains and seeds on them. “Made from whole grains” is a marketing trick - you need to be able to see the seeds.
Stay hydrated so that these nutritionally-dense foods can get absorbed by your gut: their super-power is that they get absorbed slowly (so you avoid sugar spikes) but this means you need more water to keep that absorption going.
Why does getting enough fiber in our diets have a bigger impact on weight than counting calories? We've all been told that we need to eat fruits & veggies because they're healthy - but what exactly makes them healthier than other foods? Why do we have to work harder to lost weight AND gain muscle when we don’t get enough fiber in our diets?
Foods that contain fiber and are low in refined carbs are healthy because they reduce inflammation. Period. Forget all the "natural" and "organic" stuff. That is marketing speak. There are a lot of natural things that are not good for us (apple seeds contain cyanide). In the US, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate the use of the term “organic”. Cow pies are natural and organic. Don’t eat them.
So while natural and organic are nice, they do not guarantee that a food is actually healthy or will help us restore metabolic balance, reduce stress, and lower inflammation (all things you need to do to lose fat or gain muscle).
Foods high in fiber reduce inflammation in a couple of really important ways:
Fiber is processed by "good" gut bacteria into metabolites that communicate with the immune cells in your gut and let them know things are cool. This lets your immune cells chill out and reduces gut inflammation.*
Fiber slows down the absorption of simple carbs so those simple carbs don't hit your liver and bloodstream like a tidal wave. This helps you avoid sugar spikes that are stressful to your liver, pancreas, blood vessels, and other organs and reduces inflammation.
Foods that are high in fiber are fruits, veggies, nuts, whole grains, DARK CHOCOLATE (a personal fav). These foods come with other nutritional benefits like vitamins & minerals that allow your cell's enzymes to work properly and antioxidants that help reduce stress.
There is a reason why some nutrients are called “essential” vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or fats. Our bodies need them to function and we can’t make them ourselves so they have to come from our diet. Remember that enzymes are the little protein machines that actually carry out all of the chemical reactions in your body. If your enzymes don’t work properly, your body doesn’t work properly and you feel crummy and you eventually get sick.
Getting enough fiber in our diets reduces the amount of fat our bodies will store. This is because foods that are low in fiber cause sugar spikes and inflammation. Sugar spikes = BGLs raise too fast, causing too much insulin to be released, encouraging our liver & fat cells to store more glucose (as fat or glycogen). Insulin will also stop our fat cells from releasing fat and being able to use it for energy.
Rapid blood glucose spikes are biochemically stressful on our cells. The metabolic stress of sugar spikes causes our liver & fat cells to call for "help" from the immune system - these signals also encourage our bodies to store fat and not burn it! Insulin can encourage our bodies to store glucose as glycogen in the liver, but inflammation changes things and encourages fat storage specifically. When you have inflammation, you get less glycogen storage or muscle growth. You just get fat storage.
If we rely simply on eating less calories, or trying to burn more calories with exercise, without getting enough fiber, we're going to have to overcome the fat-storing growth factors first. This is why we have to work harder to lose fat - or build muscle - when we have metabolic imbalance & inflammation in our bodies.
And who wants to work harder or take more time making progress on our health & fitness goals? Especially when you could enjoy snacks like dark chocolate and bananas, or peanut butter and apples, or whole grain toast with honey. Stop counting calories and start getting those 25g of fiber a day.
A short note on foods that are “made from whole grains”: this is another marketing tactic. Foods that are nutrient-rich with the vitamins, minerals, and fiber you’re looking for need to be actual whole grains. You need to be able to “see the seeds”.
Everything else is “made from whole grains” but this means that whole grians were the starting point, fiber was removed, and something else was made from that refined carbohydrate. Everything is “made from whole grains”. Vodka is made from whole grains. Vodka is not a health food.
Metabolic tips for reducing inflammation by getting enough fiber:
Build your meals around fiber + protein first.
“See the seeds”: When you do eat refined carbohydrates (aka processed grains like cereal, crackers, breads), choose options that have visible whole grains and seeds on them. “Made from whole grains” is a marketing trick - you need to be able to see the seeds.
Stay hydrated so that these nutritionally-dense foods can get absorbed by your gut: their super-power is that they get absorbed slowly (so you avoid sugar spikes) but this means you need more water to keep that absorption going.
*There’s so much new, freaking cool research coming out about how our gut microbes interact with us and help regulate digestion, inflammation, & gut function.
Richards, JL et al., (2019) Dietary metabolites and the gut microbiota: an alternative approach to control inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Clinical and Translational Immunol.
Kawano Y et al., (2022) Microbiota imbalance induced by dietary sugar disrupts immune-mediated protection from metabolic syndrome. Cell.
