High Fiber Diet - Eat More Soluble Fiber

Foods like hushpuppies and corn bread contain corn meal, which is considered a good source of soluble fiber. Corn meal acts very much like Metamucil in your digestive tract. Soluble fiber is any type of food or grain that helps attract water to the bowels. It is highly beneficial to your diet! We all love corn bread and hush puppies, right?

Eating More High Fiber

Oatmeal, grits, and cooked dried beans are another good source of soluble fiber. Who doesn’t love hot oatmeal on a cold morning or cold oatmeal on a hot day? How about oatmeal cookies as a snack? (Or oatmeal cookies for breakfast...why not???)

How about chili beans and baked beans? We all love those too, right? A high fiber diet doesn’t mean you have to eat gross or yucky stuff that tastes bad. Maintaining a fibrous diet can be a lot of fun!

About 2 weekends a month I fix a bag of dried beans and flavor them with spices of my choice. I like to use the *fast cooking method especially. It's not only quick, it's easy~

This way we can enjoy beans all week long. Each time I reheat them, I get plenty of soluble fiber AND have far less problems with constipation!

Each of these foods attracts water in your large intestine then swells, which helps to 'sweep' bowels through your large intestine.

Other sources of fiber include, vegetables, fruits, popcorn, nuts, cereal, oatmeal, and yogurt with active live cultures.

Cooked Beans - Fast Cooking Method

Place dried beans in a sieve. Sort through the beans and remove any discolored beans and stones. (Sometimes you will find small stones in dried beans.) Rinse thoroughly. Add a large amount of water to a large cooking pot. Bring the water to a hard boil then add the beans. (You'll need as much water in the pot as you generally use for pasta. You can also spray some cooking oil into the pot to keep beans from sticking to the bottom of the pan.) Cook the beans hard for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Remove from heat, cover and let them sit for an hour. After an hour, pour cooked beans through a sieve and rinse completely. Add beans back to the pot with a can of chicken stock or water. (You'll need just enough to submerge the beans.)

Add spices like Cumin, Chili powder, 2 T. Filippo Berio Cold Pressed Olive Oil, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, dash of hot sauce, and whatever else you like. Cook on low heat for a few hours until beans are tender.

Served regularly, beans are a wonderfully delicious source of high fiber. Include them in your diet!

Did you know that 'wheat bran' is not a good source of soluble fiber, although many people do recommend it. Why???

Because excesses of wheat actually s-l-o-w down your metabolism. (Especially is you have Type O or A blood!) If wheat bran slows down the metabolism, it seems self defeating to include a lot of it.

Most people are allergic to wheat and have a very low tolerance for it. Wheat actually inhibits and interferes with your bodies ability to burn calories. That's exactly why wheat shouldn't be recommended for constipation relief. If you are allergic to wheat, it might just make matters worse!*

Therefore, you should not include a lot of wheat bran in your high fiber diet. If you just can't live without bread, try low calorie breads. They generally contain around 7 grams of fiber per slice and are lower in calorie. That amount of fiber is very high, considering that most breads only contain 1 or 2 grams per slice.

If you're like most Americans, you're eating only about half the amount of fiber you should. Studies show that the average person eats between 12 and 14 grams of fiber a day. The FDA recommends an intake of 11.5 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories, or 25 grams per day for a 2,500-calorie diet. While that may sound like a lot, most people can meet this daily requirement by eating several servings of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and dried beans a day.

Check labels on the foods you eat too. Foods with 5 or more grams of fiber per serving can be labeled 'high fiber' while foods with 2.5 to 4.9 grams of fiber per serving can be labeled, 'A good source of fiber', according to the FDA's food labeling law.

A High Fiber Diet

Try foods that have added flax in them. There are a few select foods that now contain flax. Flax is one of the best fiber foods for a high fiber diet that there is. Right now, you can find flax added to cereals and flax cookies but you can bet over time, they will be adding flax to a variety of other foods. If you buy flaxseed, you can add them health shakes, salads, or fresh fruit smoothies.