Fiber

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I’m having trouble reaching my fiber goal. Looking for ideas on how to add it. I’m already adding chia, flax and hemp hearts to my food

Answers

  • Corina1143
    Corina1143 Posts: 3,022 Member
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    Fiber cereal, fruits, nuts, veggies, salads.
    Maybe it's a good thing it's taking a while. Probably better to increase Fiber gradually.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,568 Member
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    Most of mine comes from truly large amounts of varied veggies and fruits. (I try to eat at least 400g of fruits/veggies daily, and ideally more like 800g+.) A bit more of it comes from whole grains (oatmeal, especially) or whole-grain products (like bread, tortillas, etc.) But that's just me.

    Corina is right: Increasing fiber gradually is a good plan, because increasing it suddenly can cause various types of digestive distress.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,982 Member
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    Gerbil184 wrote: »
    I’ve found that the majority of foods entered into the datatbase only have the basics logged. People losing weight are usually interested in carbs, fat, sugar and calories. I’ve eaten foods I know to be contain Iron but they show as 0 iron in the nutrition info. So if it’s saying you’re not hitting your fibre target, maybe you’re doing better than you think just because the information inputted is lacking some detail

    Good point!

    @dansauve8765 Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

    To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

    Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that's what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct. Note: scanning is mostly only available with Premium these days.)
  • VeryKatie
    VeryKatie Posts: 5,949 Member
    edited May 15
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    Make whole meals with tons of veg and various legumes like white and black beans, chickpeas and lentils. I've been working in the same thing. Making a point of getting lots of soluble fibre. Any time I make something saucy, I throw in a half a pound of greens if I can, such as spinach. Add sweet potatoes and celery and tomatoes... add carrots and onion. Anything you can think of. Tofu and edamame, tempeh - not just for vegans. The problem with just adding flax and stuff is simply you can't add enough to make a worthwhile difference without ruining the dish. Switch to different grains too. Quinoa, brown rice, etc. Whole grain breads and high fibre cereals. I'm finding almost every meal needs to be fibre focused, sigh. When snacking, snacking on fruit and veg, hummus, etc.

    So I made chili yesterday using 1lb of extra lean ground turkey, and added a can of black beans l, a can of chickpeas, half a head of celery, two carrots, a sweet potato, cherry tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, spinach in addition to the crushed tomatoes. That had a good fibre punch to it.

    Made some pb and cocoa chia seed pudding with granola for breakfast. It was actually good! Other breakfasts include whole grain toast and avocado with an egg...

    And lunch is leftovers of the previous day's dinner so that I get fibre in there too.
  • MargaretYakoda
    MargaretYakoda Posts: 2,690 Member
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    I’m the odd one out who is gonna suggest a daily teaspoon of psyllium husk.

    You can add it to biscuits or cereal. I used to add it to a cracker recipe. But lately I just down it with a big glass of water after dinner.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,982 Member
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    VeryKatie wrote: »
    Make whole meals with tons of veg and various legumes like white and black beans, chickpeas and lentils. I've been working in the same thing. Making a point of getting lots of soluble fibre. Any time I make something saucy, I throw in a half a pound of greens if I can, such as spinach. Add sweet potatoes and celery and tomatoes... add carrots and onion. Anything you can think of. Tofu and edamame, tempeh - not just for vegans. The problem with just adding flax and stuff is simply you can't add enough to make a worthwhile difference without ruining the dish. Switch to different grains too. Quinoa, brown rice, etc. Whole grain breads and high fibre cereals. I'm finding almost every meal needs to be fibre focused, sigh. When snacking, snacking on fruit and veg, hummus, etc.

    So I made chili yesterday using 1lb of extra lean ground turkey, and added a can of black beans l, a can of chickpeas, half a head of celery, two carrots, a sweet potato, cherry tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, spinach in addition to the crushed tomatoes. That had a good fibre punch to it.

    Made some pb and cocoa chia seed pudding with granola for breakfast. It was actually good! Other breakfasts include whole grain toast and avocado with an egg...

    And lunch is leftovers of the previous day's dinner so that I get fibre in there too.

    @VeryKatie Peanut butter and cocoa chia seed pudding sounded delish so I looked for a recipe and adapted this. But I'm curious about yours.

    https://www.asaucykitchen.com/peanut-butter-chocolate-chia-pudding/

    I love chai and am going to try this in the near future:

    https://www.asaucykitchen.com/warm-chai-chia-seed-pudding/

    My chai spice mix:
    • 2 t cinnamon
    • 1 t ground ginger
    • 1/2 t cardamom
    • 1/4 t allspice

    But like the recipe says, one could just use cinnamon or play with other flavours. (Like pumpkin pie spice.)
  • Vio_let23
    Vio_let23 Posts: 40 Member
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    Metamucil - sugar free orange flavor 2tsp - 30cal, 6g fiber - it tastes really good if you like orange flavor,
    Thomas lite english muffins - 100cal, 8g fiber,
    Arnold 12grain bread - 4g per slice,
    Quaker oats - 4g fiber per serving,
    Oatmeal crisp with almond cereal - 6g fiber,
    Raisin nut bran cereal- 7g fiber,
    Cinnamon puffins - 6g fiber,
    Kodiak cakes buttermilk -5g fiber.
    Plus fruits and veggies. A banana has 3g fiber.
  • joatrock
    joatrock Posts: 2 Member
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    Agree with the orange Metamucil, it's very helpful, also to suppress appetite when you had enough that day. All bran buds is great too, surprisingly tasty in yogurt. I also found a keto tortilla that has 19 grams of fiber. It's very good warmed and eaten plain, chicken quesadilla or cut and baked into chips. Best of luck!
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 889 Member
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    Are you grinding your flax seeds? Often it's very hard for the body to break down the outer part of them and they'll just come out whole....so you're really not getting much benefit there. I just use an old coffee grinder (that I don't use for coffee) and grind them up to add to whatever I'm adding them to.