When I started watching my calories this past March I very purposefully avoided putting too many rules in place. I figured if I started trying to manage carbs, or sugar, or anything else I'd eventually give up. So, I kept it to simply managing calories, and that was a very effective approach for me in cutting weight.
In the course of managing my calories I noticed a side benefit to this as well that minor digestion issues that regularly flared up for me largely died down. Over time, I have concluded that this is because my fiber intake has increased some as I've started eating more low-calorie fruits and vegetables.
This confused me a little since the way fiber helped me seemed to be the opposite of what it's reputation is. I was visiting the bathroom less frequently rather than more. The jokes I had always heard were always about how fiber kept you chained to the toilet.
With this evidence behind me and having learned about some of the purported benefits of a high fiber diet I decided a few weeks ago that I would increase my fiber intake. If increasing my fiber intake a little helped out my digestion increasing it a lot would make it even better, right!?
WOW, have I learned a life lesson! Specifically, it is not wise to increase your fiber intake between 50% and 75% overnight. The body has to adjust to this new way of life. Fiber has to be stepped up gradually. The problem is, this is hard to do. Too much fiber produces just so much gas (Sorry for that detail!), but too little fiber will not adjust my body to being able to handle the volume of fiber I need to have in my diet. Furthermore, it's not always easy to know whether I've properly hit my fiber target.
So, I'm hopefully at the tail end of this adjustment period. Having gone through this, I really don't ever want to fall off the fiber wagon because it'll be painful getting back on.
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