Why it's Important to Get Friendly With Fiber

Why it’s Important to Get Friendly With Fiber

Fall is the time I try to reset my eating habits. After a summer of chips and margaritas, I’m planning my meals more carefully and filling up more on veggies and fruits to keep me satisfied. So why then am I continually waking up feeling bloated?  With all the extra roughage I am eating, shouldn’t I be waking up with a flat stomach?    

It turns out that for women in the menopause years (and that is me for sure), fiber is the key to keeping the bacterial in our intestinal tracts healthy and preventing that stubborn bloat. Wait. You eat a salad every day for lunch, doesn’t that count?  Yes, it does, but the fiber is more than just lettuce. That’s because there are two kinds of fiber in our diets: soluble and insoluble.   

It sounds complicated, but it’s really quite simple.  Insoluble fiber is the type you get salads, veggies, and fruits, and soluble fiber comes from seeds and legumes. The foods with insoluble fiber are superheroes to your diet and help lower that stubborn LDL cholesterol by absorbing slowly in the intestine and help, um, gently move things along.  They also help regulate our insulin response and prevent the dreaded sugar crashing at 3 pm!  

We all know how to eat foods with insoluble fiber, but fitting soluble fibers into our day can be a bit more tricky.  

Experts recommend women getting approximately 25g of fiber a day but typical women consume ½ of that! So here’s where you can start:  

Lentils ½ c. 8g

Avocado 1/2 5g

Apple, with skin 4g

Chia seeds 1 tbs. 4g

Sweet potato 4g

Almonds 1 ou. 4g

Flax seeds 1 tbs 3g

Oats ¼ c. 4g 

Garbanzo beans 1/2c. 8g

But here’s the other reason that a fiber-rich diet is essential. Constipation affects women more after menopause, as declining estrogen may reduce the speed at which food travels along in our digestive tract.  It’s time to keep things intentionally moving...What’s a better reason than that to start using the flaxseed in your shake! 

Once you start to pay attention to the different kinds of fiber in your diet, you will feel better and probably even look better.  If you are looking for additional ways to keeping healthy during this stage of your life, contact me and I would love to get you started.