OT-Fiber for a non-UCer

This is a question for my fiancee, you may be able to tell she dictated it to me as I typed:

She hasn't been going regularly and I told her I would ask my knowledgable posse for some advice. She doesn't eat a particularly balanced diet and has been trying to get more fiber. One thing she has noticed is supposedly high fiber foods only have a few grams of fiber. She doesn't eat very much to begin with. She says "I can't eat 20 apples a day!" Metamucil gives the same problem-not enough fiber-she'd have to drink five glasses a day or whatever. She drinks the Metamucil, eats fiber bars, has some pills, eats bean burrito and things like that. She says it's helping but she's just eating too much, like constantly eating and she feels like she's about to explode. She has a constant feeling of things moving and constant roiling in her gut and a kind of dull pain (welcome to my world babe ;) ).

Anyway, any advice for her?

http://s.doctoroz.com/sites/default/files/dm_uploads/4_053_50FiberRich_PRINT.pdf

While you may have already seen this I would recommend maybe at looking at this task differently. Perhaps seeing the amount of fiber something has vs the ability to eat it. Raspberries for example give 8g of fiber according to that chart while only being a cup in size which is much more managable to eat than the three apples it takes to overtake the cup of raspberries. Also food processing would help and combining in a shake or perhaps a raspberry cooked up and made made as a sauce for a cooked artichoke that in itself provides one meal and about 18g. of fiber according to this. Again it all depends on what does not fill her up and maximizing =/

How much fiber is she trying to consume in one day?

A couple of points,
- She doesn't eat a particularly balanced diet, Why not?
- She doesn't eat very much to begin with. Neither my DW, but she grazes all day long. That helps her in various ways, gets balanced diet (because she is eating in small portions and can essentially have various items), controls her blood sugar levels, so she is not exhausted at the end of the day.

- How much water does she drink, in sips, not in glasses. You gulp a glassful of water down, its going to make its way out. You drink in sips, it will run through the system, before it is directed for excretion. Keeps skin healthy.
- Activity - What are her activity levels like?

I don't see any need to of getting extra artificial fiber, if she decides to eat balanced diet regularly, has active lifestyle and takes some probiotics. How many times has she 'flushed' her system? As a kid, my grandpa used to flush our system once a month with castor oil. Now sells castor oil gelcaps or take Magnesium citrate to flush the system and restart.
I am against adding stuff in my system if its really not needed or if the same effect can be achieved by small modifications in the lifestyle.

I can't stress enough the need to be sure she's got adequate fluid intake. Without that, the fiber makes a nice bulky stool that just sits in the colon and dries up - like cement. That can create terrible constipation.

Thanks for all the replies guys. Unfortunately I think this is sort of the crux of it, said by deltaforce

"A couple of points,
- She doesn't eat a particularly balanced diet, Why not?"

She doesn't want too. She likes sugar and she doesn't gain weight by eating poorly so she does it. She cooks for me two to three nights a week, pure good, raw food from scratch but will go home and eat something not so good. So looking back, she doesn't want to fix the cause of the problems, she wants to fix the effects of the problem without changing and it's not easy she's finding.

Oh well, I'm not one to push solutions or 'my way' on someone if they don't want it, not even the girl I've dated a decade. She got a tad defensive about it when I brought up a summation of y'all's suggestions so I'll just drop it. If she suffers enough to want to change I'll help, if not, life goes on as it has with sugar, candy, chips et. al.

Seriously, she's kind of acting like this woman from this "It's not about the nail clip" If you haven't seen it please watch it :)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg

Post Edited (Levi) : 1/19/2014 3:32:06 PM (GMT-7)

She's not atrociously bad. I'd say 70th percentile compared to other 'Muricans, which I guess isn't saying too much. Still terrible relative to my diet though.