Fiber

Fiber’s great. Adequate fiber intake can favorably impact satiety, glycemic control, blood lipids, and bowel movement regularity, all while reducing the risk of several cancers and chronic diseases. In fact, the benefits of prioritizing dietary fiber are two-fold; we’ll enjoy the direct benefits of having sufficient daily fiber intake, but we’ll also increase the likelihood of consuming the wide variety of vitamins and minerals that come from fiber-rich fruits, vegetables, and grain products. Having said that, going a little overboard with the fiber can be unpleasant, as it can lead to excess gas, bloating, and bowel movement irregularities spanning the spectrum from constipation to diarrhea.

Fiber technically falls under the “carbohydrate” umbrella, but it’s digested far differently than your typical carb. Insoluble fiber pretty much goes right through you, so it provides close enough to 0kcal/gram to consider its energy content negligible. In contrast, soluble fiber can be fermented in the colon, which allows us to absorb roughly 2kcal of energy from each gram of soluble fiber consumed. Note that fiber digestion is pretty complicated, so these values for kilocalories per gram are just general approximations. Nonetheless, if you consistently hit a daily carbohydrate target but your fiber intake fluctuates dramatically from day to day, the amount of energy you’re actually absorbing from your diet will fluctuate as well. Nobody wants to meticulously go through their diet and precisely manipulate their intakes of soluble and insoluble fiber (or handle the resulting calorie calculations), so an easy and effective strategy is to set a daily carbohydrate goal, set a daily fiber goal, and get close to both on a daily basis.

There are two common sets of daily fiber intake recommendations: one set that gives an absolute recommendation in grams, and another set that provides a fiber recommendation per 1,000 kilocalories in the diet. In absolute terms, women are typically advised to consume somewhere around 28g/day and men are typically advised to consume 36g/day. When expressed relative to total energy intake, both men and women are advised to consume 14g of fiber per 1,000 kilocalories in the diet. Of course, scaling fiber recommendations to energy intake can get a bit challenging when you start approaching the upper and lower ends of the energy intake spectrum. If you’re consuming 4,000+ kcals/day, you might find that this fiber recommendation is a bit high; if you’re on a very low-calorie diet, you might find that this fiber recommendation is a bit low.

Practically speaking, most people tend to find a “sweet spot” with their fiber intake at which they’re most able to enjoy the benefits for satiety, bowel movement regularity, and stool consistency without experiencing excess gas or bloating. If your fiber intake is low and you’re struggling with hunger or noticing that your bowel movements are of low frequency or poor consistency, a bump in fiber intake might be helpful. If you’re consuming a bunch of fiber and feeling gassy or bloated, then a reduction might be in order. So, a decent approach is to start with one of the previously mentioned recommendations (14g per 1000 kilocalories, or 28-36g/day), then experiment a little bit to see where your “sweet spot” is (or, more accurately, your preferred range of daily fiber intake). Anecdotally, it seems that most people find a comfortable daily fiber intake range somewhere between 20-50g/day.

MacroFactor makes it easy to monitor your fiber intake and find your "sweet spot," as it continuously tracks your daily intakes of fiber, starch, sugar, and net (non-fiber) carbohydrate.