How Fiber Helps You Lose Weight
- Fiber helps in weight-loss and weight control by the simple fact that high-fiber foods contain fewer calories for their volume. Fiber-rich foods, such as fruits and vegetables, whole-grain cereals and breads, yams and sweet potatoes, and legumes are low in fat calories and have a high water content. You are, therefore, eating less and enjoying it more.
- High-fiber foods have a high bulk ratio, which satisfies the hunger center more quickly than low-fiber foods; consequently, fewer calories are consumed. Fiber-rich foods take longer to chew and to digest than fiber-depleted foods, which, in turn, give your stomach time to feel full. Feeling full earlier leads to consuming fewer calories.
- Foods with a low-fiber content are, in most cases, considerably more concentrated in calories. These fiber-deficient foods (fats, refined sugars, flour, and’ alcohol) require hardly any chewing and have little or no bulk content. Therefore, large amounts of calories are consumed when eating these foods before your appetite center in the brain (appestat) is satisfied. These low-fiber foods are more concentrated in calories, so that more food must be eaten before the stomach can be filled.
- Removing fiber from food, such as refining grains or flours (white bread, white rice, pasta, cereal), or by extracting the juices out of whole fruits (example: apple juice, grapefruit juice, or cranberry juice) and vegetables (vegetable juices), results in the following negative features:
- High-fiber foods turned into low-fiber foods.
- Low-calorie foods turned into high-calorie foods.
- High-bulk foods turned into low-bulk foods.
- Longer eating time changes into shorter eating time, which consumes more calories.
- Easily satisfied hunger changes into hunger not easily satisfied.
- Complex carbohydrates slowly absorbed change into simple sugars, which are quickly absorbed.
- Slow absorption of food causes less insulin to be produced, which changes into increased insulin production with subsequent weight gain.
A high-fiber diet is essentially a healthy, low-fat diet, which decreases the intake.of refined and processed food. This encourages the consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain cereals and breads. Fiber produces its most beneficial effect when it is eaten with each meal of the day.
Dietary fiber takes longer to chew and eat, with the subsequent development of more saliva and a larger bulk swallow with each mouthful. The larger bulk helps to fill the stomach and causes a decrease in hunger before more calories can be consumed. High-fiber diets help to provide bulk without energy and may reduce the amount of energy absorbed from the food that is eaten. These high fiber diets are often referred to as having a low-energy density and appear to prevent excessive caloric (energy) intake. Countries that consume high-fiber diets rarely have obesity problems.
- March 4th
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