Why fiber’s your dietary ally

November 28, 2015 Ashley 0 Comments

It always amazes me.

People skip breakfast thinking it’s one less meal of calories that’ll help them lose weight.

(Nay, sir. A fat(e) worse than death.)

Then, of course, not a few hours later and a few vending machine snacks in, they’re wondering why serial snacker Trish across the hall is so damned slim. And heading over to GNC for the latest weight loss product. And then doing the same damned thing for the next X months of their lives. Now, I dunno who hypothetical coworker Trish is. Maybe she just has superior genes begotten from Greek gods. But, more than likely, Trish is following that one food royalty rule I mentioned before – starting with making your first meal of the day as natural as it is mammoth sized. We want healthy and large. (And, no, I don’t mean Oprah rocking an untamed ‘fro.) What I do mean is mostly plant based foods – like fruit – with extra fiber. For me personally, that means a bowl of sliced bananas, dates, berries, nuts, and – finally – more fiber (’cause the fruits I eat are already high in the stuff). The magic ingredient:

Chia and flax seeds.

You might be wondering – why’s fiber so imperative at my first meal?

And that’s a good question.

In fact, it’s one I was wondering two days ago. I’d just run out of both flax and chia seeds while prepping my morning amalgamation, and wondered how much of a difference it’d make. What would I really miss out on here? Regularity? Overall tummy tranquility? Feeling full enough? Given that Thursday was Thanksgiving, my answer came several hours later – in the form of a voracious, insatiable, esophageal siphon sucking down avocado dip and every other article of vegan edibles. (Note: just ‘cause a food is vegan doesn’t mean it’s healthy in mass amounts.) It was like my internal food tube’d been possessed and the demons wouldn’t flee me till they’d had their fill. And that came exactly three trillion avocados in and innumerable servings of greens, potatoes, and who knows what else later. This may sound normal for the typical American Thanksgiving-ee, but it’s not my holiday M.O. This was an entirely different state of consciousness for me. I was bewildered. Primal. A pregnant woman with a phantom fetus. The world blurred as my unhinged jaws anaconda style accommodated the entire dining room table and subsequently spat out its splinters. We may have lost a few family members that evening. (I should probably call to check the casualty status.) Anyway, this was the point where I was feeling something akin to regret… but I couldn’t be sure what. Certainly it wasn’t shame or guilt. I mean, after all, it hadn’t been me at fault here – but some unseen fleet of entities commandeering my corpus.

Well, that or my lack of flax and chia doing their daily duty.

See, if we were to rewind back to early o’ clock that day – when I was whipping up organic bananas – bathed (usually) in fiber bringing seeds (but not today), something important was about to be missing that I’d generally benefit from. Later, when I researched why this atrocity’d befallen me – so as not to make this horrible dietary folly again- what I got was this: on every other day but turkey murder day, those high fiber herb kernels would normally charge into my ileum (a small bowel region), inducing a series of checkpoints on the rest of the food trying to migrate toward the exit – slowing their movement. This may sound unnecessary. But when you think about it, it’s actually the single best way to avoid my friends, family, or coworkers needing to perform a binge exorcism on me later in the day. By pumping the brakes on my banana bolus in the A.M. hours, I get a steady release of my food fuel for far more P.M. hours. This means I’m not a vending machine victim later. I’m not hungry since my tummy’s dungeon is taking its time assimilating nutrients thanks to the platoon of plant zygotes I stationed in the southerly bit of my body. That’s what the fiber reinforcements do when you send ‘em in there. The sustenance ammo it comes with can fire off for farther and longer all day long – like an extended release medication. All because a little flax, chia, extra fruit, or (insert some other source of fiber here) that I added to my morning meal.

In sum: a high fiber, plant based breakfast functions like a weight loss supplement.

Why risk inadvertently gnawing off Aunt Agnes’ arm at the next family dinner?

Or pay for an overpriced pill?

When the true solution’s so much cheaper?

We don’t have to live like that anymore, you and I.

Go start your new life now and get summa this stuff in your belly:

(But probably not these specific ones. Looks like someone’s disgusting hands have touched them.)