Home / Articles / Dietary Fiber Helps to Gain Ideal Body Weight

Dietary Fiber Helps to Gain Ideal Body Weight

June 22, 2020

Most people will want ideal body weight. But how do we know whether or not we already have healthy weight? One way to find out is by calculating our Body Mass Index (BMI) which formula is, body weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of body height (in meters). According to World Health Organization, someone’s body weight is considered ideal if their BMI is between 18,5-24,9 kg/m2. Meanwhile, someone is said to be underweight if their BMT’s less than 18,5 kg/m2 and overweight to obese if the BMT’s more than 24,9 kg/m2.

Reaching or maintaining ideal body weight is not easy, but doing so is extremely beneficial for both appearance-wise and health-wise to us. By simply keeping our weight normal, we reduce risks of many degenerative diseases like heart-related illnesses, diabetes, and hypercholesterol. Aside from that, we’ve also improved our physical performance by keeping the joints in our body from bearing too much weight caused by excessive fat accumulation.

Balance Diets to Get Ideal Body Weight

There are many ways we can do to get ideal body weight, including working out to burn excessive calories in the body. But the best way to choose is to eat balance diets that ensures we consume enough amount of food and still meet our nutritional needs. And one thing to note about adopting balance diets is always include adequate amount of dietary fiber.

Not only does dietary fiber have low calorie, only half of that contained by sugar or starch, it helps control body weight and increase satiety as well. This happens because fiber has the ability to bind water and swell in our digestive tract, causing our stomach to feel fuller and a delay in gastric emptying. Dietary fiber also increases production of leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and food intake. Additionally, it will prevent fat gain by getting unecessary fat out of our body with the feces.


Reference:

  1. Slavin, J.L. 2005. Dietary fiber and body weight. Nutrition 21: 411-418.
  2. Zhang R. et al., 2016. Effects of cereal fiber on leptin resistance and sensitivity in C57BL/6J mice fed a high-fat/cholesterol diet. Food & Nutr. Res 60: 10.3402/fnr.v60.31690.

You May Also Like…