#342 | The One Thing That You're Probably Not Eating Enough (Fiber, Mindfulness and Resilience) - Whole Again: Mindfulness and Resilience Through Kintsugi Wisdom

Are you unknowingly overlooking the one nutrient that could transform your energy, immunity, and long-term health?

In a world obsessed with protein, low-fat labels, and the latest nutrition villain, it’s easy to miss what truly fuels resilience from the inside out. If you care about feeling stronger, aging well, stabilizing your energy, and reducing inflammation, this episode reveals why fiber—not another trendy superfood—may be the simple, powerful shift your body has been waiting for.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

Why fiber is essential for a healthy gut microbiome and how that impacts your immune system and overall resilience
How increasing fiber can help regulate blood sugar, balance hormones, lower cholesterol, and reduce inflammation
Simple, realistic ways to double your daily fiber intake without restrictive dieting or overwhelming changes

Press play now to learn how one small, doable shift in your daily nutrition can help you feel more whole, energized, and resilient from the inside out.

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Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole again, the show that can help you navigate today's uncertainty with more mindfulness, resilience, and grace. And I'll start off this episode by saying I can't wait to get cancer. Said no one ever this year as I celebrate the 25th anniversary of my last bad day, which started my fascination with Kintsugi.

And feeling whole again, I'm sharing tips or perspectives I've discovered along the way. Each week over on LinkedIn and on Substack, I share the tip or perspective, and then I'll also share most of them here on whole again. And this week we're up to number eight, which is to eat more fiber, which sounds like.

Maybe an odd tip, but hear me out, because this one is essential in helping us feel whole again because of Fiber's role in making sure our gut microbiome is happy with us and just overall its impact on our health. Now, over the years, we've had plenty of villains in nutrition. I think it started off with fat.

We had to reduce the amount of fat we had in our diet. So, so many of the products that we routinely buy stripped out all the fat, but that doesn't make the products all that appealing. It doesn't make them flavorful. So what big food did was to add a bunch of sugar, and then sugar became the enemy. So yes, having too much, in particular saturated fat, not good for our overall health, and then having too much sugar, highly problematic.

So those two were clear villains. Then big food was like, well, what are we gonna do? So they decided to add protein to almost everything. Protein became. That would slay the villain of fat and sugar. Now, there's also another villain, which may need its own episode, which is all around ultra processed food.

Now, some food processing actually makes sense. So when it comes to ultra processed food that is worth double clicking into to ensure that we have a common definition. That said, I'm gonna put that one off to the side, but for right now, let's just focus in on protein, because protein seems to be everywhere.

Just walk the aisles of your market. Every packaged food out there, or almost everyone has some type of marker on the package touting how much protein it has. It doesn't talk at all about fiber or any of the other macronutrients. It's all protein all the time. At least that's how it seems, and you see it in the ubiquitous protein bar.

How many different choices of protein bars do we have? How many do we need people? Of course, there's also. Protein infused cereals, protein waffles. There's even, I think, by one of the Kardashians protein popcorn. I think we have jumped the shark when it comes to protein. And again, no mention of fiber. And as I mentioned up front, I'm a fan of protein.

It's vital to our overall health and we should get high quality protein in our diet. To make that we have the proper amount of muscle as well as strength that can help us feel whole again, but also can be with us as we get older. So protein is important, but too much of a good thing sometimes is not so much of a good thing, and we're missing out on the benefits of talking about fiber.

In fact. To all my other fellow podcasters that bring in wellness influencers, please bring on some fiber enthusiasts because fiber is key. As I mentioned to our gut microbiome, which drives our immune system. It's also important in regulating our blood sugar, our hormonal balance. It can even have an impact in lowering cholesterol.

And reducing inflammation, which is the portal to so many chronic diseases. Just watch TV for a bit. Most of those commercials are all about diseases that are brought upon through chronic inflammation. So fiber is key, but we're not eating enough of it. Most people only get about 15 s of fiber a day, and the recommendation.

It's closer to 30, but we can do this because we can do hard things, and this one isn't all that hard. You can add fiber to your food. It's not about subtracting all that other stuff. It's about subtracting fat from your diet, at least saturated fat, subtracting sugar from your diet. Of course protein is being added to our diets, and I'm suggesting that we should add a more potent hero to our diets fiber, and we can do it through say, adding chia seeds or flax seeds to your breakfast, to your smoothie.

That's an easy way to add fiber to the diet. You can also eat whole foods. Whole fruit as opposed to juice. So instead of drinking a glass of orange juice or apple juice, have an orange or have an apple, as they say. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. You can also add beans and legumes to your burrito or tacos or soups or salads.

Another easy way to add more fiber to your diet is with my homemade cracker recipe. Yes, you can do it. It adds plenty of fiber. It also adds some protein. They taste delicious. If you'd like the recipe, just reach out. I'll be happy to share it with you. Takes very little time. All these are beautiful ways to slowly, and I'll underscore this.

So don't run off and amp up your fiber intake from the standard 15 grams to the recommended 30 grams overnight. Build up to it. Allow your body to adjust. Your body will thank you later because fiber is an essential macronutrient that can help with our overall health. Help us feel whole again and that.

Very important gut microbiome will be very pleased that you are adding more fiber and more diversity to your diet. So that is tip number eight as I mentioned upfront. If you wanna make sure you don't miss a tip, you can follow me over on LinkedIn and on Substack over there, I share more writing. I do a live teaching each week, and I also host live meditation so you can practice with other like-hearted people.

As always, thanks for listening. If this episode resonated with you and you think a friend or two might like it, I hope you'll send it over to them and until our next episode, which is on Monday. Have fun storming the castle and keep putting a beautiful ripple into the world and oak. Don't forget to eat your fiber.

And if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, Michael O'Brien schiff.com. And sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect, and join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again, and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.

Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this. And. We've got you.