About a month ago I bought myself a fitness device, of sorts. I got a Shapa scale. It is a scale, but it doesn't tell you how much you weigh or your body fat percentage or anything like that. Instead, it links to an app on the phone and tells you how you are progressing to your goal on a color scale. Dark gray means you are not doing well in your progress; bright blue means you're doing great, sweetie. Along the way, Shapa gives you daily"missions" which could be anything from 'do ten pushups' to 'write a letter to your 85 year old self'. I've learned that you must do the missions or you will go straight to dark gray. It's not a good place. Don't ignore the missions if you choose to get a Shapa. It won't matter how well you think you're doing with your eating and your exercise. Shapa thinks you suck if you don't do the missions.
Today's mission was to eat 20 grams of fiber. I accepted the mission and quickly realized that I don't know much about fiber. What foods have fiber? How much was I currently getting each day? Doesn't 20 grams seem like a lot? What is the recommended daily fiber intake?
When you have so many questions, there is only one place to go: Google.
Turns out that most fruits and veg have a bunch of fiber in them. So do whole grain products like oatmeal or whole wheat bread. Black beans are also an excellent source of fiber, as is popcorn. The American Heart Association recommends that you have 25 grams of fiber each day.
I'd packed some strawberries for breakfast this morning, along with Greek yogurt. There's no fiber in Greek yogurt, if you were wondering, but strawberries have three grams for a cup.
For lunch I had a nice big salad with edamame (fiber), avocado (fiber) and lettuce (fiber). The total of fiber in the salad was about four grams. That got me to seven grams.
I had 13 grams of fiber to go and no idea how I was going to get there. I'm not going to lie: I was going to mark this mission a success even if I didn't make it all the way to 20 grams just because I learned a lot and had never paid so much attention to fiber.
When I got home I looked at everything in my cupboard and freezer to find something to eat with good fiber content AND that would be within my WW Smart Points. I ended up having two chili lime chicken patties from Trader Joe's (2 g of fiber each) and two whole wheat sandwich thins (4 g of fiber each). Now I was at 19 grams. So close! What was I going to do?
That's when I remembered I had a couple of apples in the fridge. There are four grams of fiber in an apple! BOOM! Done! I didn't even have to cheat on the mission! The other thing was that I came in right at my WW Smart Points budget for the day, so win/win!
I'm feeling very full. Fiber is filling and typically low in calories and Smart Points. Here's a good list of fiber-ful foods to you to feast upon.
It was a good day. I like learning about things, so I consider this day a success.
2 comments:
I learned a lot about fiber when I had my diverticulitis episodes. I found a couple good ones: English muffins that are whole-wheat or something, I don't remember exactly, I'd need to see it, but each muffin has a bunch of fiber. Also, a type of Mission flour tortilla has a bunch of fiber. They taste good, and they're good for you fiber-wise.
I like almost everything in the fiber list starting with #1
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