How much fibre do you really need?

Oh hello, welcome to healthy Ish, your daily podcast from Body and Soul. I hope you are feeling healthy and well. I am Felicity Harley. Now, folks, we have some new research about fiber and we thought you might be interested in it. To share more, I'm joined in the studio by clinical nutritionist and best selling author Lee Holmes. She's going to fill us in on the research and tell us exactly how much fiber we should be eating every day and where to get it from. Yes, it's the

Thank you for having me. It's really exciting to be here. Yeah, nice to meet you.

I've followed you for many years and watched all your books pop up.

How many now eleven?

Well done, and so it's nice to have you in the studio.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Talking about what might seem a boring topic, but a very interesting topic. Well, apparently nearly half of Australians still admit to not knowing how much fiber they should be eating daily. I am one of those, are you yes, tell us about this?

Yeah.

So there was new research conducted by my Fitness Pal into fiber and nearly half of Australians do not know how much fiber they're eating at all, which kind of indicates to us that fiber. We need more nutrition education and awareness around fiber. And they don't know, you know, what foods have fiber in them and how much fiber to have a day.

So yeah, it's a really big thing.

I have to say. I do know that I'm eating enough because I'm obviously regular. That's the sign you're eating enough.

That is why I signed one of the sub absolutely. Okay, so how much should we be eating?

Yeah, so for an adult in Australia, for women, it's about twenty five grams of fiber and for men it's about thirty grams of fiber a day. So I think that, you know, one of the ways to really ensure that you're getting that amount of fiber is looking at nutrition labels, you know, reading the pack, checking the fiber contents, looking at maybe downloading my fitness Power, which is a great nutrition app where you can actually track your macros, you can track your nutrition, which is really good.

Actually, they've got a new gut health.

Plan on there as well, which is interesting with recipes and things like that. Also, maybe it's a bit laborious, but keeping a food diary, if you're really into it and you really want to know how much fiber you're eating, you can do that.

It's good to keep a diary because even for a week, just to give you some idea of well, not just fiber, but how much content you're eating or I agree, how much fats and.

Yeah that I totally agree.

And also on a daily basis, things change so much, so looking at it over a week is a really good way to look at it, I think, rather than just going oh, one day on its own singularly, over a week, things spread out and then you can go, okay, so I ate more fiber on Tuesday, and I didn't do much on Wednesdays, so maybe I'll have a bit more on Thursday sort of thing.

You know, what is other signs that we perhaps aren't getting enough that we need more.

Yeah, so fiber is really linked to gut health, so it really really helps you become regular. So if you're constipated and things like that. It may mean that you're not eating enough fiber. If you're tired after eating, if you get bloated, if you get gas, that's a sign of a sort of imbalance in your microbiome, so that can be from fiber as well.

Definitely feeling tired as well.

Fiber is so important for so many things, not just gut health, but also weight management because when you're eating fiber, you're feeling full and you're not eating as much because you're feeling that feeling of fullness, which is good blood sugar regulation as well.

It's really good for that and cholesterol.

So there are many many things that fiber really helps out with.

Do you how do you keep a track?

I mean you're a pro of this, I mean, is it and perhaps not just fiber but other like protein and carbs, And I mean do you I actually innately know this?

No, not really, but I use my fitness power personally. I do that every year, and I do check it and I do put in my food every day. I'm turning fifty seven next month and I hit menopause.

What and I started to thank you.

I started to put on a bit of weight and it was just menopause weight. And so that's why I went to the app to try and put in these amount of calories I was eating and just really track my macros and eat a little bit more protein because that was that actually really helped me as well to lose the kind of excess weight that I put on during menopause. Yeah, so I find that really helpful. That's kind of how I do it.

That's refreshing to hear.

Then you know that even someone who is an expert in this field and nutrition and knows what they should be eating, still you know we still need got it.

We definitely do. We one hundred percent for sure.

So talk to us about some of the foods we should be eating.

Yeah, so some of the foods that we should be eating are things like fruits with the peel on, so apples, berries are really good things like that. Veggies we all know veggies are really important for five but keeping that skin on as well is really helpful.

But other things like.

Lentils and dull and beans and good good sort of grains as well.

Brown rice is really good those kinds of things.

Cooked and cooled rice is a good predigested sort of fiber which is really good for you as well, nuts and seeds. So in the morning, so it's winter in Australia, now you're having a bowl of porridge with oats and then you put some cheer seeds on top.

That's a really good source of fiber.

Actually, I have to say I started adding a teaspoon of cheese seeds to my breakfast probably about a year ago. Yeah, and I really noticed the difference in how regular I became like it was just such an easy thing to do. And now I sneak it onto my kid's breakfast when they're not looking.

I just call it the magic dust, the magic dust.

And then but now one of my kids is too smart for you say, oh, my magic dust makes it taste terrible.

Oh really.

There's black seeds as well, which I really like in the hot seed meal that you can put on and into smoothies as well. And black seeds are really iron fiber, So that's another thing you could do.

It's just went back to the veggies and keeping the skin on. Do you keep the skin on carrots? Like, how do you do that?

I actually do when I have a smoothie, so I just throw the whole thing in.

Maybe I'm lazy, but I do just kind of.

Throw it because the nutrients are in the skin.

Yeah, a lot of.

Them are in the fiber. The fu content is also in the skin.

So that's what I do.

And when you're doing say a stir fry, if you're doing zacchini and things like that, you can just leave that on. And then with broccoli you can use the stalks in a stir fry as well. If you're doing something like that, Yes, low cooking, I generally pile in some sweet potato.

I usually can d and keep the skin on, you know. Yeah, Yeah, that's how I do it.

Why do we struggle so much with getting fiber into our diet.

I think it's something that we don't really think about it, Like, it's not really a macro macro Like it's not like carbs or fats that we think about or protein. It's just one of those things that we don't really talk about. We don't really talk about gut health, do we your bowel movement so much. It is still a little bit of one of the things that we don't really talk about much. So I think maybe, but there's so much new research now around fiber and how important it is

I think, how do you know if you're eating too much?

I think if you're eating too much, you could get a bit of bloating. With too much you know, cruciferous vege and things like that, and lots of veg, you know what I mean, and lots of dial you can get a bit bloated. So I think balance is key with everything, you know.

I went to a funeral on Monday. It was my Auntie's mother, so my AUNTI my marriage and gladys Inn was was one hundred and four point eight. Wow, yes, wow her and she was very health conscious and I probably didn't appreciate that till to the funeral and all the grandkids and great grandkids got up and spoke. But her biggest health edit was just simplicity. Yes, yeah, just simple eating.

Yeah.

And I suppose often that's lost in our wellness obsessed society. Yeah, it's coming back to simplicity, I agree.

And with wellness, do you notice this that it's all about the new and the words you can't pronounce and the ingredients from the congo and all of that, you know, that sort of stuff. And I think going back to real food and traditional sort of cooking methods and simple things is really good. My grandmother was also well actually one hundred and three when she would it, and her whole thing was about humor. She's like, just enjoy yourself and have a bit of humor, and you know, balance

Thank you for coming on healthy Ish, Thank you for having me well, my friends, no excuses get into more fiber today. And by the way, Lee does have a new book out. It is called Nature's Way Too Healing. It is all about her dare I say, Journey of healing from suffering from long COVID. If you do enjoy this chat with Lee, jump on tell us rate and red you it, or you can of course subscribe too healthy Ish, share this set with a friend, share the love look on too body and sooul dot com dot you.