Fiber or no fiber?

(Jeffrey Belanger) #1

For those of you who are still doing keto and haven’t switched to carnivore haha! Do you guys worry about fiber? I barely get 20 grams of total carbs a day and always less than 10 grams of fiber. Just wondering if anyone has noticed any differences.

(Scott) #2

never worried about fiber on keto but just over one week carnivore.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #3

I’ve never had any regularity issues on KETO or Carnivore. Frequency and bulk changes but that’s to be expected and normal. Less :poop: in, less :poop: out. Simple. All the ideas about how fiber is absolutely necessary and lacking on KETO are based on the standard diet high in processed foods that have had their fiber removed for palatability or shelf life. There is no fiber requirements for humans. This is a really interesting presentation. :cowboy_hat_face:

#4

Yes, huge one. Totally ignored fiber for a long time because I believed I didn’t need it. That was almost 3 yrs ago and for the last 1.5 years had a ton of pooping problems thanks to it. Tore some stuff up, needed a colonoscopy, fast forward and all I needed to do to stop all the crap I was dealing with was up my fiber. Haven’t had an issue since.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #5

During the first couple months of transitioning from SAD to keto I had bowel movement problems. For me it turned out to be too much cream cheese. I tried upping fiber in the form of leafy greens and psyllium husks. Did doodly squat. Eliminating cream cheese fixed it. Since that lesson learned, I eat cream cheese more sparingly but still several times per week, just not by the block. I also know that cream cheese works to stop the opposite problem whenever that arises occasionally.

That said, I also eat bok choy several times per week. I’ve discovered that on days following bok choy meals, I do not have easier movements from the extra bulk and fiber. Instead, bok choy firms them up, sometimes a little too firmly. Just eating my standard high fat regimen keeps me easily regular.

#6

Chocolate and cheese are often the culprits behind constipation.

#7

I think there’s a massive problem in grouping all fiber together, and there’s also a problem with the anglo-european crowd basing “zero carb” as per usual on convenient, yet false, mythologies of traditional peoples. Furthermore, the work of Norm Robillard PhD (highly recommended by the Drs Michael & Mary Dan Eades) is much more nuanced in its approach towards both fermentable and non-fermentable fibers, helping people heal IBS through addressing gut fermentation as well as general gut dysfunction. His enormous contribution is the book Fast Tract Digestion.

Dr. Georgia Ede does make a great point about the western promotion of industrially produced byproduct fibers like wheat bran and how it doesn’t smell or taste good unsweetened (same goes for oat bran!) - however berries, citrus, apples, seaweed, kale and al the other cruciferous veg along with roots like carrots deliver some pretty amazing antioxidants and hormone balancing in how their fiber sequesters excess estrogens and other nasties in an extremely polluted world. Polluted both in terms of the greater ecology (nearly all rivers and oceans have industrial chemicals and/or radioactivity in them, industrial water filtering for urbanites doesn’t filter hormones and other nano-particles like those in drugs) as well as home environments (indoor air pollution from offgassing of various things, including teflon). In addition, yes, constipation in some form plagues most folks in the industrial world which is a far cry from the highly mineralized speedy transit of traditional cultures that prized living clay and a range of herbs/spices. Everyone who’s not doing a super extended fast should be eliminating twice a day generally (and 3 or more times a day if using living clay and zeolite!).

Apparently even midlife and elderly women can benefit from veg/fruit fiber’s hormonal assists, as estrogen dominance over progesterone can be an issue even with low levels of estrogen in blood tests. Louise Gittleman PhD is a big fan of veg/fruit fiber, so are Phinney/Volek/Westman in The New Atkins New You, as well as Dr. Anna Cabeca - due to evidence that free radicals play a huge role in cellular dysfunction, and antioxidants as well as a range of minerals are powerful protectors.

Sure, we can go weeks, months, even years without any fiber whatsoever (and with enough organ meat variety, decades). But for those of us interested in cultivating cellular health and late life vitality in a toxic world, certain kinds of fiber are an amazing blessing.

Seems in the online keto world there are a few vocal anglo european folks who hold modern ideologies of zero fiber or nearly zero fiber/so-called carnivore for identity reasons (not about healing hyper-fermentation fiber-sensitivity/IBS) and there’s quite a bit of using (and I mean it in the worst way) of traditional peoples (like the Inuit and Masai) to justify a decidedly supremacist belief system and false expertise of certain so-called “primitive” peoples. Such everyday colonialism has got to stop. And Weston A. Price did wonderful work in studying traditional nutrient density without stereotyping peoples.

Personally, I’m a major fan of research and decision-making that leads to Keto Without The Crazy (Amy Berger, MS coined that term?).

Fact is that the vast VAST majority of online LCHF/ketoers don’t have Inuit genetics. Also, Stefansson and others did not live through the seasons and trade cycles of a variety of Arctic peoples over a number of years to fully grasp the nuances between the many cultures that range between low to high Arctic and the fact that mousegrass and seaweed and even the occasional berry when it could be gotten were valued, though not in heavy supply! In addition, the traditional high Arctic peoples in general are not known for any particular longevity per se, and nowadays for the displaced high Arctic peoples with the SAD foods, food scarcity, and alcohol genocides the average age of death is much younger (which makes all the anglo-european name dropping of tribal references to multiple Inuit peoples even more ridiculous).

And for those inclined to say “but the Masai, the Masai!” the German military officer Moritz Merker at the turn of the 20th century reported them as fans of plants and honey as written about in a superbly in-depth article by Chri Masterjohn PhD for the Weston A. Price Foundation:

“The Masai herded cattle for a living, not simply to consume milk, meat, and blood, but to trade with neighboring tribes for a great variety of plant foods and other goods. It reveals a people who used hundreds of local plants for a great variety of purposes, and who regularly consumed wild honey.”

(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #8

Some of you may get tired of me posting an article by Dr. Georgia Ede about everything that comes up here, but she says it so much better than I ever could…

Pulp Fiction: The Truth about Fiber
from the article:

Cardboard: yes. Delicious: no.

If you still aren’t convinced that we are not designed to require fiber, I have no choice but to appeal to your good judgment and common sense. Pour yourself a nice big bowl of wheat bran, grab a spoon and dig in. I don’t mean a bowl of sweetened bran cereal with milk or yogurt or berries on top, I mean a bowl of 100% unsweetened wheat bran. Does it look or smell or taste good to you? Do you like it? Do your kids like it? Can you swallow it?

#9

I never counted, never cared about fiber.
On high-carb, on low-carb and later on keto I ate pretty much fiber.
Now I eat very close to zero if I do my woe right (theoretically I could do extreme low net carbs, that is important for me and lots of fiber but why would I do that?). Never for very long, admittedly, I need so many longer term experiments! But I ate an insignificant amount of vegetables and typically no oily seeds in the last months even on my carbier days where some (sometimes probably much, I still don’t count) fiber still found the way into my diet but it’s nothing like before, my staple food is meat and eggs.
I never saw any difference, my output is pretty good and very regular on any diet, it seems. A tad better with less carbs but practically everything is better with less carbs in my life. Total carbs don’t matter, though, as far as I know.

(Jane) #10

I must have fiber to not have constant diarrhea. Even on keto. N=1

I take a psyllium capsule every morning so I don’t have to take an Immodium AD every day.

Had this issue before keto and related to gut biome from traveling to Brazil and China. Haven’t found a solution yet but still looking.

(Paulene ) #11

:roll_eyes: reductio ad absurdum works both ways.

If you still aren’t convinced that we are not designed to require carbohydrates, I have no choice but to appeal to your good judgment and common sense. Pour yourself a nice big bowl of crunchy nut corn flakes, grab a spoon and dig in. Does it look or smell or taste good to you? Do you like it? Do your kids like it? Can you swallow it?

She should have stuck with with the sciency stuff.

(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #12

No…

Who said anything about carbohydrates?

But since you mentioned it, carbohydrates, unlike fats and proteins, are not required fr human health…

#13

That posting of Georgia Ede is just polemic.

You can also give someone a bowl of pure dry whey powder to eat and say “we are not designed to eat protein” or give a glass of melted lard to drink, to demonstrate that humans should’t eat fat.

(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #14

Speaking of polemic…

I thought the point was , why would you consider something that is indigestible and unappetizing, food?

You can take that wheat bran one step further and let it go rancid… Yum!

(Teb Tengri) #15

If I feel I’m not pooping enough I’ll toss in a couple extra 2.5g servings of Magnesium βHB at about 250mg magnesium each during the day and that usually gets it going.

(Troy) #16

UGH
Now I’m craving some frosted mini wheats cereal with all this talk about cereal and fiber😫

I can maybe go for some Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes too!

REMEMBER
“They’re not good. They’re Gr-r-reat!”

(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #17

Is " Life " still out there? I loved that stuff…

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #18

I admit to a less than ideal visits to the bathroom … Anyone use Psyllium Husk? (powder)

(Robin) #19

You might try magnesium citrate powder in water every morning or before bed. Helps with regularity and can be adjusted to the amount that works for you. At night, it also helps with sleep.

#20

I have, I had more luck though when mixing both soluble and insoluble fiber, meaning just taking both, not always both at the same time.

For a while I had nearly no fiber, for years. Messed me up bad, screwed up my colon from not going regularly. Years of issues, all to be screamed at by the colonoscopy guy to start forcing in fiber, said he was fine with keto and all the low carb stuff, but GET FIBER! I tried everything at that point so I folder, in my own head, to prove him wrong. He won! Within a week I was back to going regular again but have the parting gift of diverticulosis a colon that’s easy to piss off now. Wasn’t worth it for a carb I can’t even process anyways. That was before I switched to TKD/CKD so the word carb was still a swear word to me then LOL.