Day 4 of my heart-healthy eating plan. I constantly feel both ravenously hungry and completely stuffed. I start the day with 1 cup of oatmeal topped with 2 tablespoons of ground flax seeds and a handful of blueberries. It’s like eating visious brick. My stomach is accustomed to toast, jam, neufchatel, perhaps a banana… and suddenly it’s being hit with this bomb of insoluble fiber unlike anything it has ever known.
Insoluble fiber is indigestible, meaning that this titanic bowl of oatmeal contains a comparable number of calories to a plate of well-slathered toast (about 450). The difference is that I’m not interested in food until noon, when I’ll eat a plate of beans, barley, and veggies along with a banana and yogurt. Again, comparable calories to my former lunch (about 550), but the sheer amount of fiber has my stomach stuffed and uninterested in snacking.
Yet my active body needs more calories. It’s so confused. I’ll stare at my snack stash of nuts and apples, uninterested and frankly repelled by the idea of adding more heft to the material that’s churning its way through my digestive track. My intestines groan. My stomach puckers. Next thing I know, I’m visiting the co-worker on the seventh floor who keeps the jar of candy on his desk and grabbing a fiber-free Dove chocolate to appease my hard-working innards.
Seriously, do people on diets know about the power of fiber? Anyone who claims that an apple can’t satisfy their appetite obviously doesn’t have a gut full of oatmeal and beans.
My stomach will have a bit of reprieve in one week, when it will accompany me to France and England, two countries that deem oatmeal suitable only for horses and Scotsmen.
