How Much Fiber You Need Every Day with JJ Virgin

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Soluble fiber has been shown in studies to help with weight loss when tested on lab mice, reduce the risk of heart disease, stabilize blood sugar levels, reduce LDL cholesterol, and of course, feed the microflora of the gut and promote gut health. Go team. Go team. Soluble.

Here's jj, Virgin, triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New York Times best selling author. It's time to reignite wellness.

Hey, it's jj and today we're going to be talking about fiber. And how much fiber do you really need and why do you need it? It's a super important topic to be talking about right now because a lot of the diets, the carb carnivore diet, which I still cannot believe is a thing like seriously, and the ketogenic diet, some of these diets can tend to be low in fiber and that is a very big problematic thing. I'm going to explain why you want to do it because honestly, if fiber were a drug, it would be prescribed by every single doctor. It helps with constipation, weight loss, satiety, blood sugar support, cholesterol detoxification. Hello, we need this. So before I dive in, I want to do a shout out to Tracy who left me a 5 star review in Apple. ITunes says truly helpful information. JJ continues to provide quality and truly helpful information as up to date and accurate. Can't wait for more episodes. So, Tracy, like now we literally are doing three a week. It's crazy. I just got my travel mic because I realized that there is no way I can keep up with this when I'm not home very often. So you're going to be seeing me live on Facebook and Instagram from probably a load of hotel rooms as well. Now, before we dive into the show, I wanna share another favorite with you. So stay with me. I'll be back in a moment.

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So let's dive in first and let's talk about what you need to know about fiber. I'm going to talk specifically now about some research that supports its benefits, which is so important. I recently had a little bout on on doing home shopping and discovered that you're not allowed to say anything on home shopping. Even with all these studies that I could cite with fiber and show they were like, nope, can't say that. Can't say that. I'm like, drove me nuts. So here's some of the great stuff that you'll want to know about fiber because then you'll understand why I'm always harping on you to take more, to use more of it. Again, if this was a drug, it'd be prescribed by every single doctor. So of course when we think of fiber, we think of digestive health. And no question it's great there. It can help with constipation, diarrhea. It's actually very good for normalizing and balancing and good for feeding the microbiome, the gut microbiome. But let's talk about a couple other things that are super important. Number one, satiety and weight loss. Do I have your attention? Yes. Okay, so satiety and weight Loss. And this was a group of researchers, Clark and Slaven, that looked at 40 different publication studies and then put it all together. And they found that satiety is increased with diets that contain lots of fiber. It's kind of like, duh, right? Um, and I'll explain the mechanism in a second. But 107 treatments were analyzed, and the satiety enhancing effects of fiber were well documented in each of the studies. It's also been found to be associated with weight loss due to staying full longer and resisting the urge to eat. Okay, so why. Let's talk the mechanism of action. Shall we geek out a bit? Yes, you say, so what happens is stomach. So fiber actually slows down stomach emptying. And when you slow down stomach emptying, you suppress a hormone in the stomach called ghrelin that can make you hungrier when it's high. Now, ghrelin really comes up during. While you're sleeping, which is fine, you're asleep, right. But you don't want it high during the day. And if you've ever noticed that when you have a poor night's sleep, your ghrelin's higher and you're hungrier, it's. You probably notice you were hungrier. You wouldn't go, wow, my ghrelin's higher. That's why you're hungry. Your ghrelin's higher because you didn't get enough sleep. All right, next. It sparks or assists weight loss. So this was a study by Howarth et al. And it was a survey of studies conducted on obese and overweight individuals. It was noticed that an increased intake of fibers in their diet helped prevent subsequent hunger and sparked weight loss. In all studies, there was an average drop in energy intake. That means they ate less in both obese and individuals compared to the control. So they were less hungry now, again, because of the Grayland situation. So. And I don't know about you, but. But like, I can't. I just. First of all, I know that if we just drink a little bit of water and chia seeds or my extra fiber that I use, then you can delay eating for a while. And also, I love what Dr. Joel Kahn says, hunger equals younger. The first time you feel hungry, could we just like, relax, have a little water, maybe add a little chia, freshly ground flax, or extra fiber, and delay in weight quite often. That's just Pavlovian response. And we're not really hungry anyway. But it's so much. Think how great it is to have some control over your appetite. Really, really. Cool. All right, next one. Balancing blood sugar. And you know what? When you really look at it, it is all about balancing blood sugar. So super duper important. So this was an experiment by Bolton et al. Was conducted on eating whole fruit versus drinking fruit juice. Now you know how I feel about fruit juice. If you've been around or read the sugar impact diet. Fruit juice is soda. Right? Soda from fruit. Anyway, they measured the blood, the insulin response levels, and it was found that the insulin response levels were lower in whole fruit as opposed to juice naturally. Right. A link to fiber has been associated as responses to insulin depend not just on the glucose content of fruit, but also the fiber content as well. So when you have more fiber in your diet, you have a lower insulin response. This is super important because when insulin's high and stays high, it locks the doors to fat cells. It's also pro inflammat. We don't want that. Now let's talk. Oh. It also maintains healthy cholesterol levels as we know. It can help both raise HDL and lower ldl. It also can detoxify the bad estrogen. So it can help you remove the estrogens and keep your shbg, your sex hormone binding globulins, where they need to be. Super important. And I see some people, because I'm recording this live on Instagram and Facebook asking about, well, what about your microbiome? First of all, that's why I love my audience so much. I love our community because you guys are smart and like, the microbiome is huge. I'm hearing some, well, what about the microbiome? When you feed the good, you can. When you take fiber, you feed the good bacteria in the gut and you boost your immune system. This was a study by Slavin that found that studies that have found that fermentable fiber has an effect on gut bacteria and bacteria and intestinal flora. Many grams of plant fiber, such as whole grains, psyllium, etcetera, have a good effect on the gut and have a prebiotic effect. Now, I think of prebiotics as the fertilizer for the gut flora so they can flourish. Okay. Kind of think of the small intestine as your flower bed. The prebiotic is the fertilizer. So those microorganisms can really flourish well in there. And, and you know, if you've been around listening to any of the podcast interviews, hopefully you have. If you haven't, go to subscribe to JJ.com you'll know that we talk a lot about the gut microbiome and how important it is for your health, for your immune system, for your mood, for weight loss. It's like for everything, basically. All right, now, next one up. It reduces the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. This was a study by Pietnin et al. Wolk et al, Giaco et al. We've got a couple studies here. One study on nearly 22,000 Finnish men who smoked were followed for six years. The study showed that increased fiber intake reduced saturated fatty acid levels as well as helped reduce the risk for heart disease and reduce the risk of coronary death. Which. They're smokers. Hello. So not saying, hey, smoke and take fiber. But they were a higher risk group, so that's super cool. Next one was a similar study of 68,782 women. Finally, a study done on women, the Crowd Goes Wild, who were diagnosed previously with stroke, cancer, diabetes, et cetera, showed that an increased intake of fiber helped reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. And then the final study. And I must stop citing the studies. And we'll dig in to what you can do with this randomized study conducted on type 1 diabetic individuals revealed that a high fiber diet improved glycemic control. That's blood sugar control. And reduced risk of hypoglycemic events. That's when your blood sugar drops, you feel crappy, shaky, yucky, compared to those with a low fiber diet. And again, that is because we are stabilizing blood sugar and have that slow, steady release instead of this big spike and dump, which is what we want to avoid, avoid, avoid. Okay, and thank you so much. I'm seeing lots of questions popping up. Keep them popping up. Comments popping up. Um, for those of you listening to this podcast, I record my individual episodes live on Facebook at JJ Virgin Official and on Instagram@jj.virgin. and then I grab questions off of there. So. So you can always join me live too. Okay, so. So here's. Here's the. Here's the bad news is that, I mean, you hear all the benefits that I just went through, and there are more than that. And even though there's all those benefits, the USDA recommends 25 grams a day. I call that a good start. But reality is you want to be getting about 50 grams or more a day. The important thing is you do that over time, not overnight. Like, you'll be mad at me if you do that overnight. Quick aside, when I started to really study the benefits of fiber, I got very excited about it and I went and got my dad to up his Fiber overnight, not over time. And that was not a good thing. Do not make a large 6, 4 Swedish guy. Angry was my. He was. He was always a sweetheart. But he's like, I'm constipated, honey. Like, too much information, dad. Anyway, so make sure we're doing it over time and I'll talk about what to eat and how to do this. So here's the challenge. We should be having about 50 grams USDA. We're going to like blow that out. They say 25 grams. No, let's get this up to 50 grams or more with all of these amazing health benefits. But the reality is that women are getting about 12 to 13 grams a day. Men about 16 to 7 grams. 16 to 17 grams of fiber, day. Not good. So we need to quadruple or more that amount. Okay, so let's talk about how the heck to do that. And it's easier than you think. And that's the super cool thing. All right, so here we go. Soluble versus insoluble fiber and resistant starch. Let's talk about all the different types of fiber because they play different roles. And fortunately, nature, Mother nature is smart. She is. And so I'm going to talk about some of the foods that you'll be able to easily get all of these in. So most of the fiber that you're getting most high fiber foods have about a third insoluble and 2/3 soluble fiber. Now, so let's talk the differences. So soluble fiber, how do you know it's soluble? It's dissolved by water and GI fluids when it enters the stomach or in the intestines. So these are things like fruits, nuts and seeds and barley. And then it's turned into a gel like substance which passes through the small intestines and is fermented by the microflora in the large intestine. So this stuff can sometimes make you a little gassy, is the transfer there. And you've seen this when you've put like some of those fiber supplements that are really rich in soluble fiber, and you put them in water and all of a sudden you walk away and don't drink them right away. And it just becomes a gel. That's soluble fiber. Soluble fiber has been shown in studies to help with weight loss when tested on lab mice, reduce the risk of heart disease, stabilize blood sugar levels, reduce LDL cholesterol, and of course, feed the microflora of the gut and promote gut health. Go team. Go team. Soluble. Now let's talk about insoluble fiber. I think of these, like the scrubbing bubbles for your small intestines. So I think of soluble like the sponge and insoluble like the scrub and bubbles, insoluble fiber, it's not dissolved by water or the GI fluids and it moves through the digestive tract largely unchanged. So think about things like veggies, whole grains, bran and its benefits and our weight loss. Weight loss, weight loss, weight loss. You getting that one there and reducing the risk of diabetes because it just you helps you not absorb as much. Right. And you're just passing, getting things moving. So it helps with transit time. This is really important. So a couple things is it keeps you feeling full, but it also helps with transit time. While you want to slow down stomach emptying to help you feel fuller longer, keep ghrelin suppressed, you want to increase, um, it's transit time through your small intestines and your large intestine. And I'll just give you an example. If you pooped and you left that in your toilet and did not flush, what would happen? Would not smell good. Right? Same thing. Like if you're got stuff hanging out in your intestines, it's not coming out. Bleh. All right, so we want those moving along. And insoluble fiber helps move that along as well. All right, let's also talk about resistant starch. Name that because it resists in digestion. So these are the starches that don't get digested when consumed. And things like green bananas and cool potatoes are examples of that. They're super good for the gut microbiome because it aids in producing something called butyrate, which helps you with fat burning. In fact, I went on Dr. Oz to talk about why potatoes should be brought back into the diet and said potatoes are really nature's diet food because of this resistant starch. And I'm not talking french fries, I'm talking eating some cooled potatoes. Hopefully boiled is better, which I know is not the most delicious. I take little small, those little small nibbler potatoes and we cut them and we roast them in avocado oil with a little sea salt and rosemary. And then we let them cool down so we elevate their resistant starch. So that's what I do. Okay, so why is butyrate so important? It fuels the colinocytes in the body that line the gut. So when you have impaired butyrate production, it's linked to a lot of diseases in the gut. It also butyrate also is known to have some anti cancer properties because potentially helping to prevent Colorectal cancer and anti inflammatory properties by suppressing specific immune starches. Immune cells, rather. Sorry. All right, so let's talk about now that you're convinced, right, you are convinced that you want to add fiber into your diet and you want to get soluble, insoluble prebiotic fibers, which of course we talked about, feed the gut bacteria, provide the fertilizer and resistant starch. So how do we do this, you ask? I'm so glad you asked. So first of all, most important is make sure that you increase fiber slowly, gradually, not overnight over time, so that you do not experience any intestinal discomfort. Please, not on my watch. So I say do it in about 5 gram increments. And if you notice, and all along the way, as you're eating more fiber, drink more water in between your meals. Fiber, remember the insoluble or the soluble binds with water and then that gets moved through. So drinking more water in between your meals and as your upping your fiber, super important. But we drink the bulk of our water in between meals and then we're eating fiber with our meals. Next thing, oh, the dog's going wild. Next thing, high fiber foods and hold one moment please. Daisy, shh. Stop it. So let's talk again about how to increase fiber. We talked about increasing your fiber gradually and doing it in 5 gram increments. Now let's talk about the foods that you can be doing. Here's some of my favorite foods. And again, you'll be able to get the show notes. If you're listening to this as a podcast, you can grab them right now. If you're watching this live, they're not up until the podcast goes live. And remember, you can subscribe. Subscribe to JJ.com and so@jjvirgin.com eatmorefiber we will have the high fiber food list. Here's some of my favorites. And by the way, we have great recipes that go along with all of these as well@jjvirgin.com beans and lentils. So when you eat beans and lentils, legumes and lentils, you'll get anywhere from 13 to 16 grams per cup. By the way, I just found out from my buddy Dr. Lisa Moscone, who wrote the XX Brain and Brain food that garbanzo beans and I'm sorry, Dave Asprey, I know you hate them so much, but they have phytoestrogens in them, so even a bigger shout out there for how they can be so good and healthy for us. And then artichokes and artichokes are great because they also have prebiotic fibers in them. Berries. And so artichokes, 10, 10 grams of fiber per cup. Berries have about 8 grams of fiber per cup. And here's what's super cool about berries loaded with antioxidants, as we know now. Avocados, 7 grams per cup. And here's what's super cool. And I actually think that's a little bit low. I gotta check those numbers. The other cool thing with avocados, you're also getting healthy fats. This is one of my favorite things. Like, if you think about the morning smoothies that we teach you how to make, and we'll put the link to our smoothie guide in the show notes as well. You can see that you can easily crank the fiber up in your morning smoothie just by doing the berries, doing avocado, and even adding in some, some chia seeds or freshly ground flaxseeds. So next one up, broccoli, 5 grams per cup. Chia seeds, 5.5.5 grams per tablespoon. Plus, of course, with broccoli, you're getting amazing antioxidant protection in there with the sulforaphane. With chia seeds, you are now getting the. You're getting all those great omega threes as well. Chia is amazing, too. We have some great recipes on the site. We'll link to it in the show notes@jjvirgin.com eatmorefiber and chia seeds, you can make like, the killer chia pudding. Just like with avocado, we have that incredible dark chocolate avocado mousse. And then, of course, cooked quinoa, 5 grams per cup. Brussels sprouts, 4 grams per cup. So I'm going to just share. We've been doing brussels sprouts shaved, and then we saute them in a little bit of sesame oil and add a little bit of slivered almonds at the end. Oh, my gosh. Amazing. Rolled oats, 4 grams per cup. Apples, 2.6 grams per cup. And that is. Those are some of my faves. But obviously those are just the starting point, right? There's more than that, but those are some, some of the faves. Now I'm gonna take a quick quickie break to share some other cool stuff with you. And when we come back, I'm gonna put this into action. Like, okay, I just gave you all those foods. I told you why now what the heck do you do with that? So that's what I'm doing when I'm coming back. So stay with me.

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Welcome back. All right, so this is where I help you put this into immediate action. Here's the deal. You now know you need more fiber. I want you to think about a starting point in 35 grams a day. But goal is 50 grams or more to really help with weight loss, cardiovascular health, diabetes, detox hormone detox and balancing gut microbiome. It's, you know, this is just a huge, huge piece of critical, a critical piece for your health. So I talked about all the different types. So what we want to make sure of is that you're getting prebiotic fibers, insoluble fibers, soluble fibers and resistant starch. And so what we're just going to do is make sure that we start incorporating them into your diet. So here's what we do. Number one, I have a great product. I love 11 different types of fibers called extra fiber. So it incorporates in all those fibers. I put that into my morning smoothie each day. It's unsweetened. So you can also add that on into sauces as well. It's a great way to sneak things in. Right? And again, I want to remind you over time, not overnight. So you could start with a heaping tablespoon one day and then a couple days later you can add, add more. But you're going to bring up fiber over time, not overnight. If you bring up fiber too fast, it may make you more constipated, more bloated, but over time it's going to help with constipation, bloating, diarrhea, a lot like the obvious digestive things as well. So. But we want to give your body time to adapt. Lots of water too. More fiber, more water. So first thing is look at how you can start to increase the fiber in your morning smoothie. If you've been around my community, you know I teach you to start the day with a smoothie, a high quality smoothie. I will in the show notes@jjbirgin.com eatmorefiber I will have in there some smoothie recipes and it's easy enough to add fiber into your shake. Either you can do my extra fiber product, you can do some chia and freshly green or and, or freshly ground flaxseed meal. You can put in avocado berries, deep green leafies. So very easy to do. One of the other things I love to do is I love to in my, my cravings crusher lemonade, which is basically lemon juice, spring water, and a little bit of my sprinkles. Just a little bit, because you want to keep the sour. It keeps your sweet tooth away. And remember, the lemon juice lowers the blood sugar response to a meal. So if you're starting to feel hungry and you want to delay when you eat, because we want to have 4 to 6 hours between meals and at least a 12 hour overnight fast. Then lemon juice, water, little bit of sprinkles to taste, and then you can add in either extra fiber or some freshly ground flax or chia seeds. And that can help you delay eating too, and also will help with better blood sugar balance during the meal. So that's a super cool one too. Each meal. I'll give you an example. Last night we did this cauliflower rice, which I'm a huge fan of. So we did basically this brown rice, quinoa, lentil mix. And then for every cup of that, I did 3 cups cauliflower rice. I mixed the whole thing together. So that was how we got a load of antioxidants. Super yummy. And that's what I tend to do a lot is I'll mix in a little bit of, say, wild rice or quinoa or legumes in with a lot of cauliflower rice. And that's a simple, easy one. But each meal that I do, I make sure I'm adding in fiber. So if it's a salad, that can be nuts, I love to add in chopped walnuts. Could be sliced almonds, could be some black beans or lentils. Could be cold potatoes from the day before. So you get that resistant starch. And then of course, lots of different vegetables. Yesterday's salad had snap peas and radishes and finally found some romaine lettuce to add to the arugula. We had a little recall of that for a while there and some avocado. So I got a load of fiber. And then same thing with dinner. Also, remember, at breakfast, here's another little trick that I've been doing is I get green bananas and I freeze them. I unpeel them, obviously, and I freeze them that way. So I have the green banana resistant starch, so I can add like a third or so into a shake. So it's just another easy way to up my fiber. All right, I hope that helped. Again, you can get the extra fiber cheat sheet and all of the recipes and stuff, links, et cetera, at the show Notes. If you're watching this live on Instagram and Facebook, won't be there until I put this up on my podcast, but it is. It's at jjvirgin.com forward/eatmorefiber. Also, big ask. Pretty please. Pretty please. I would super duper appreciate it if you would rate and review the show. It helps a ton and then I can give you a shout out. So put your name in there so I can shout you out on my next time that I record, which will probably be tomorrow. We are recording a ton of these and again I super super love it when you join me live on my social media platforms too. And be feel free to ask questions. Leave them on my social media channels, leave them on the podcast ratings sheets list so that we can put them into our Friday Q and A. All right, see you next time. Thanks.

Foreigners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I check all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.