Dietary Fibre | The Real MVP When It Comes To Fat Loss

I like to think of dietary fibre as the forgotten macronutrient. Okay, okay that’s not strictly accurate – it isn’t a macronutrient. However, for fat loss, I believe tracking your dietary fibre intake is as important as monitoring protein consumption. Similarly, it ties in with how much carbohydrates you consume too.

You see, fibre doesn’t provide the body with any energy. And your body doesn’t extract any useful nutrients from it.

So, what’s the point of eating fibre then?

Well, fibre assists with several important roles in your body, particularly when it comes to digestion.

Essentially, there are two categories of dietary fibre:

Insoluble fibre adds bulk and substance to the contents of your digestive system. You can think of it as giving your digestive muscles a workout.

Dietary fibre keeps things moving along nicely

In the same way you might train your biceps or your quads in the gym, your internal muscles also need to keep healthy and strong. Insoluble fibre keeps them functioning by providing some resistance as they move contents through your system

This added bulk also serves to ‘clean the pipes’ so to speak. Gathering debris and undigested matter from the outer walls of your digestive tract and helping you get rid of them.

Ok, enough of the toilet talk.

Soluble fibre plays a crucial role in lowering your cholesterol to healthy levels.

I often have people come to see me who’ve been flagged as having high cholesterol at their last work medical. (Offshore workers need to have a thorough medical every two years.)

When we look over their general diet and lifestyle habits, it’s often clear why. Little physical activity, perhaps family history and more often than not, a poor diet.

Including more fibre in your diet is an easy way to clean up your health.

A high-fibre diet helps protect you against weight gain. Likewise, it assists with weight loss.

Like we said earlier, fibre adds bulk – effectively increasing the volume of your stomach contents. This literally helps you feel fuller.

Since your digestive muscles are getting a workout churning through the fibre, they’re keeping busy. Meaning their tied up for longer, helping to suppress your appetite.

What’s more, increased fibre intake can help with regulating your blood sugar. We don’t really need to go deep into the ins and outs of this, other than to say this is a good thing.

Healthy amounts of dietary fibre make your fat loss journey easier.

Stable blood glucose levels help make maintaining a healthy weight easier and more sustainable.

Now as if that wasn’t enough, here’s the clincher:

Tracking your fibre intake means you don’t have to track every single micronutrient

You see, the best sources of dietary fibre are fresh fruits, vegetables and wholegrain carbohydrates.

And these food sources don’t just contain fibre. The dietary fibre comes naturally packaged with a whole range of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.

So, by regularly ingesting adequate fibre in your daily diet, you can be pretty sure you’re getting your quota of micronutrients too.

The current Australian Dietary Guidelines for fibre intake are:

Now if you’re thinking How on earth am I going to manage that much fibre in a day? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

Consider the below example of healthy fibre food choices you might make in a day:

Two things to note if you want to increase your dietary fibre intake

A little word of caution though. If you’re looking to increase your fibre intake there are two key points you need to remember:

Water intake is essential when increasing dietary fibre for fat loss

Along with everything else, adequate hydration helps your digestive system function properly. Added fibre can add more work for your system initially, so we need to make sure things stay well lubricated and moving along.

Avoid a drastic and sudden increase in dietary fibre

In much the same way that you wouldn’t turn up to the gym after years of not exercising and attempt to squat 100kg, you have to give your digestive system time to adapt and adjust to more fibre.

If you’ve regularly been underachieving your fibre intake, it’s best to increase gradually. Over the course of a couple of weeks, introduce some fibre-rich sources here and there so that eventually you’re hitting your targets.