Health Nutrition

Fiber: Fat’s Kryptonite

March 13, 2009
By J White

If fat was Superman, than its kryptonite would be fiber. For cellulite to form on your body, your digestive process needs to convert food into fat. Despite your digestive system’s best efforts, it cannot digest fiber. If you haven’t guessed it already, this means your body has nothing to store.

Think about that. By just eating fiber your body goes through the whole process of trying to digest it as an energy source. Since there’s no energy to be gained from it, that means you burn more energy, i.e. calories, than you take in.

Talk about a novel way to regulate body weight. By just eating more of this stuff, you put into motion the process by which you lose weight: burning more calories than you take in.

And unlike some diet pills that use chemicals to prevent the process of fat formation, fiber is natural. It is just the indigestible cell walls of plants. Its primary function in your body is to assist in the formation of stool to eliminate waste. So if you ever have problems with going to the bathroom, the lack of fiber maybe the reason.

Does it have any drawbacks? Yes it does. You can not live off of fiber because, as mentioned above, it does not supply any useful energy to your body. So, don’t consider going on a fiber-only diet. Since it has no nutritional value, it’s unhealthy and similar to starving yourself.

What are some good sources of fiber? Any raw fruit or vegetable will always have some of it in it, but the highest sources are found in beans. Pure sources of the substance are found only in supplement form. These can be purchased in any drug, grocery or health food store.

And getting more fiber in your diet will not just help you lose more weight. It also lowers cholesterol, improves bowel function and reduces the development of coronary artery disease. That’s quite a lot for a food that has no nutritional value.

And if you need more proof, numerous studies have shown that when more fiber was added to a subject’s diet, their BMI was lowered. BMI is a measure to determine healthy body weight, which is based on your height and weight. BMIs over 30 is considered obese, while BMIs in the range of 18.5 to 25 is considered normal. Check out this link to measure yours. For the metric version, go to this link.

So for a natural and healthy way of losing weight, add more fiber to your diet because if fat was ever to have a kryptonite, this would be it.

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