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.
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A nationally representative survey commissioned by the International Food Information Council Foundation in 2012 found that more people believed it was easier to do their taxes than it was to figure out how to eat healthier. The same survey also found that 76 percent agree that “ever-changing nutritional guidance make it hard to know what to believe.”
“The exact amount of information to deliver in a dietary intervention remains an elusive question,” wrote Ma at the end of his study. “The challenge is to identify the ideal amount of information to change behavior without overwhelming the participant.” Maybe fiber is a good first step.
