Sunday, January 25, 2009

Dispelling the Myth: You Can Never Have Too Much of a Good Thing


Fiber is good for you. Everyone says so. Some of fiber's claims to fame are its ability to flush cholesterol out of your bloodstream and toxins from your intestinal tract. Every single manufacturer in the free world is wanting to capitalize on what Grandma always preached about roughage by adding it to each and every product on grocery store shelves.

On Monday, I bought one of each.

I am not a big fan of dieting. I like flavor. I like butter. I like to be full. However, I have realized, since the passing of the holidays, that Something Has Got to Give. And it needs to not be the seams in my jeans. Early in the week, while most people were not even out of bed, I filled my grocery cart with $200 worth of highly nutritious, high fiber foods. Over the next two days, I dined on double fiber bread (5 gms/fiber), high fiber oatmeal (a whopping TEN gms/fiber per serving), high fiber tortillas, high fiber English muffins, high fiber pasta, high fiber yogurt, even high fiber V-8 juice--you can DRINK your fiber--yes! All were consumed in addition to the naturally high fiber fruits and veggies I crammed into my refrigerator. (Of course, I knew enough to wash all this down with quarts of water. I'm not stupid.) I reported to my daughter Amy that, "I'm not even a tiny bit hungry...in fact, I feel a little...bloated."

I'm sure it didn't help that Monday was also the day I initiated my new vitamin regimen, chewing two Flintstones Vitamins Plus Iron each morning--totally disregarding the fact that all iron supplements have historically had an adverse effect on me.

When I became sick on Wednesday with a fever and chills, all suspicion turned to my fiber-laden larder. "I feel like I have ingested the equivalent of a small Redwood tree," I lamented to anyone who would listen. "What is IN this crap--sawdust?!" I have spent the past five days sipping chicken broth and eating plain white saltines--also excellent diet choices, btw. For future reference, I would highly recommend you not eat a lot of fiber just prior to getting the flu. You CAN have too much of a good thing. Trust me.

5 comments:

  1. oh, yes, i laughed out LOUD at this one. guffawed, actually. i think your healthy eating just may have made me feel inspired - well, that and the fact that the only baked goods i can eat these days are ones that come from my own oven - and i braved the frigidity this evening to buy a box of all bran to make fibrous muffins. i snickered in the cereal aisle when i read the caveat on the bottom of the fiber one box that essentially said, "if you decide to become high-fiber, take it slow. if you don't, you'll be sorry." oh, poor you. talk about poor timing.

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  2. Yes, me too! I am laughing...a lot. I actually had to tell Steve about it because he was wondering why I was laughing so hard. What might be a good idea now is to do a cleanse/detox. There is this easy 10 day one called "Perfect Cleanse". Might help a little...:)

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  3. P.S. I LOVE your cute house!! It looks like a picture from a magazine!

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  4. aaahahaa... still laughing. i just read this again. and this morning, my favorite lines are: "i'm not stupid." and "...small redwood tree."

    you make me happy. :)

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  5. Dawn, I trust you. Really, really, really trust you.

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