Help with fiber
 

I recently went back on a very low carb diet. As many of you know low carb diets can be deficient on fiber and cause problems. Several years ago I had an allergic reaction to psyllium husk. Apple pectin in capsule form is only 300 - 700 mg per serving and its recommended that people get around 15 grams of fiber a day as a supplement and those capsules would be less that 2 grams. There is a product called apple fiber in powder form where you can get 10 grams of apple pectin in one scoop BUT there is 9 grams of carbs and 5 grams of sugar in that serving. What the heck can a person do?

Dennis, You had the same question two years ago https://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=485262
My answer is same…very low carb may not be the best choice for your health. A LC but not keto diet would allow you as much real food fiber as you need, mainly from vegetables. I do not use any fiber supplements, but still take magnesium. See the first pages of my journal for foods I eat. All the best :wave:

Thanks I'll look at that -- unfortunately my blood sugars go up unless I eat really low carb. I had been eating a totally high carb high sugar diet for many months then randomly took my BS reading and it was 300 5 hours after eating a small meal. It was probably higher earlier. I immediately went to 30 grams of carbs or so and it dropped within days to a steady 100 sometimes lower and has lasted. I think if I go up more, even to lets say 75 or 100 grams carbs I'll have way higher BS

If you have been eating a high carb, high sugar then a LC diet is the best place to start, to get your BG down quickly. But when you’re already low carb, you need to address the 70-80% of your body’s insulin production that is simply related to how much fat you’re carrying. Simply minimising carbs, while an important step, is missing the main game!

Conquer your Insulin Resistance & Diabetes, a Quick Start Guide:
https://optimisingnutrition.com/ins...tance-diabetes/

Happy to help you in your/my journal.

Article on Fiber and how important nutrients are to gut health:
https://optimisingnutrition.com/dietary-fiber/

Too bad about the psyllium, it works for me.

Have you tried Oat or other fiber products?

I found that eating more fat was a better solution.

And using erythritol as a AS caused looser stools.

Eating enough salt helps.

Getting sufficient magnesium also helps. No magnesium supplement is 100% absorbed, leaving some in GI tract to help the material move along. Magnesium citrate is about ,40% absorbed, much better ghan Mg oxide which is only 10% absorbed. Mg citrate is a win- win,: your bowels move and your body gets its needs met. Buy at Walmart. I take 3-4 capsules a day .

To my mind, fiber is way overrated.

I started the Atkins diet in the late 1990s and upped my veggies and fiber dramatically. I lived with CONSTANT constipation for years (even while taking Citrucel daily), culminating in my first attack of diverticulitis in 2014, which landed me in the hospital for 4 days on IV antibiotics and talk of removing a large section of my lower intestine. From 2014 to around 2018, I had occasional (but regular) flare-ups of diverticulitis.

I finally cut way back on fiber, and then went carnivore in 2021. I haven't had a flare-up in almost 6 years. I haven't had a salad or a serving of veggies or fruit since 2021 and I'm doing fine. Babies don't eat fiber and they still poop. Lions, tigers, and other carnivores in the wild still poop and they don't eat fiber, either.

Granted, some people do better with more fiber, but I'm one of those who does better with NO fiber.

We are all different.

Some psyllium daily helps me to be regular and helps me pass my stools easily. If I miss a day or two, I can tell the difference, sometimes radically.

I drink a lot of water, too. And if I don't, it affects me.

I don't eat a lot of greens, and that probably contributes. But I do get fiber in nuts, low-carb millet lavash bread, and so on, depending on the day and the meal.

I'm very low carb, under 20/day, and twice as much fat as protein.

We all need to find what works for us.

We are all different, likely due to our gut health. I’ve never had diverticulitis like Dennis and Bawdy, and vegetable/fruit fiber not only keeps my digestion healthy, but allows me to eat a more satiating diet for fewer calories and maintain a healthy weight. After the initial LC weight loss, Eating more fat kept me fat. Supposedly "fat makes you fat" is a myth…but not for me.

I also have not had diverticulitis but I did have significant gastrointestinal problems that, at their worst, kept me nearly housebound. At that time I could not tolerate fiber and I cut out vegetables from my diet. I was an unintentional carnivore, or something close to that. When I figured out my food sensitivities (there were many) and adopted a diet that did not contain them, my ability to tolerate fiber increased and now I have no problem with vegetables. In other words not only are we all different in our needs but those needs can change over time. Our bodies are not static entities but changeable systems.

I think the myth about fat making you fat was based on the simplistic assumption that if you ate fat it would then be stored as fat in your body, which completely ignored the process of digestion, what the body actually did with the fat. However, fat, even if it is a myth that it makes you fat in this simplistic way, can obviously effect a person’s appetite and perhaps the degree to which it effects appetite varies from person to person also, and maybe also changes over time. I tried Marty Kendall's approach in relation to fat and it did not work for me. I do better when I keep my carbs lower and my fat higher than his system recommends.

For me the relationship between health and diet has been a moving target and I have had to adjust over time to my body’s changing needs. I guess we all have to figure it out for ourselves, using the best advice out there to help us.

That's an important point.

Decades ago, I thought I was lactose intolerant. I carried activated charcoal capsules with me wherever I went, and at the first sign of lower intestinal rumbling, swallow a couple to avert projectile diarrhea.

After trying a few different diets, I tried keto (we called it Atkins induction back then). I cut out almost all wheat due to the carb content, and lo and behold, I could eat all the cheese and cream I wanted without the slightest intestinal discomfort.

Now I put real cream in my coffee and tea, and eat cheese almost every day. I still have the half used bottle of activated charcoal caps.

What I thought was a lactose intolerance, turned out to be a wheat intolerance, that only showed symptoms when I ate dairy.

So obviously, without an elimination diet, it's difficult to know what food(s) you are intolerant of. That fiber intolerance, might be something else in disguise. I can't say.

Again, we are all different.

I was in my 40s when I went keto. I'm 78 now, with zero prescription medications. I found out what foods were troubling me. I hope you all get that lucky.

Jean - this statement should be a sticky, as it is one of the most important things we need to understand as we adapt our eating to support good health. Yes, we are different in unexpected ways where when some of us try to adopt methods that work very well for others, they don’t work for us. It’s the self experimenting and willingness to try things that are an important aspect of being able to evolve as we age to get it right. Protein and healthy fats work well for me and many others who are beyond our sixties. Fiber? Not a focus of mine, but I do limit my consumption of it with zero negative effects.