For some super-motivated people, counting calories, calculating macronutrient proportions or weighing food can help in their quest to lose weight. But for everyone else, it can be hard to keep juggling the cups and weighing scales and calculators for too long. If you fall into the latter category, researchers say that there’s only one thing to keep in mind: Eat more fiber.
When compared to the American Heart Association’s dietary recommendations, which include several common-sense pieces of advice like “Choose and prepare foods with little or no salt” and "Cut back on beverages and foods with added sugars,” the simple advice to eat 30 grams of fiber a day resulted in almost as much weight loss as the AHA’s guidelines over the course of the year. The study was published online Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The finding could be a boon for people who need to lose weight for medical reasons but feel too overwhelmed to completely overhaul their lifestyle all at once, explained lead researcher Dr. Yunsheng Ma, M.D., Ph.D. in the study. Foods that are high in fiber (meaning indigestible dietary fiber found in plant-based foods) help make you feel full for longer. Ma also proposed that high-fiber diets increase the need to chew, which in turn reduces hunger. Encouraging people to eat more fiber is also a shorthand way to point to foods that are healthiest for us, wrote Ma.
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