How fiber helps|How fiber helps you lose weight

How fiber helps you lose weight

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 food; 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.

Food 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, grape fruit juice, or cranberry juice) and vegetables (vegetable juices), results in the following negative features:      

1. High fiber foods turned into low-fiber foods.
2. Low-calorie foods turned into high – calorie foods.
3. High fiber foods - High-bulk foods turned into low-bulk foods.
4. Longer eating time changes into shorter eating time, which consumes more calories.
5. Easily satisfied hunger changes into hunger not easily satisfied.
6. Complex carbohydrates slowly absorbed change into simple sugars, which are quickly absorbed.
7. Slow absorption of food causes less insulin to be produced, which changes into increased insulin production with subsequent weight gain.