Chances are that you either read or a nutritionist recommended that you consume fiber-rich foods to lose weight. If you're wondering why that is, it is because the benefits of fiber on weight loss have been emphasized by many studies. In case you haven't observed it yet, fiber is the indigestible part of vegetables, fruits, beans and nuts.
Insoluble fiber ushers the food out of the digestive tract, while soluble fiber delays sugar and fat from entering the bloodstream slowly, preventing a spike in blood sugar levels. The FDA endorses the fact that fiber reduces cholesterol by allowing companies to advertise the fiber content on their labels.
"When you eat foods that lack fiber, your blood sugar can spike quickly. Then it crashes, causing hunger and overeating," Tanya Zuckerbrot, author of "The F-Factor Diet," said. She also emphasized that fiber reduces appetite. "Fiber-packed products tend to be low-cal, so you can eat a lot. Fiber makes you full, because it swells in your stomach when it absorbs liquid," Zuckerbrot explained.
A study by University of Massachusetts Medical School, which was published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine in 2015, compared two types of diets in volunteers and found that a fiber-rich food is as good as the diet prescribed by the American Heart Association (AHA).
Exactly 240 volunteers with metabolic syndrome, a combination of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol and obesity, were recruited. Half of them were asked to follow the AHA's diet, which included fruits, vegetables, high-fiber foods and protein-rich foods to prevent cardiovascular diseases. The other half made no changes to the diet, except to add 30 grams of fiber every day.
Both groups added 19 grams of fiber per day. The first group who followed the AHA diet lost 5.9 pounds, while the other group who only added the fiber lost 4.6 pounds. Overall, the research showed that both diets improved insulin, lowered blood pressure and reduced weight.
When it comes to specifically losing weight, a high-fiber diet has no major advantages as such compared to other popular diets such as vegan or Mediterranean diet.
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