Why Fiber is the NEW Protein (Weight Loss, Blood Sugar Management, Gut Health & More) - PLUS MASSIVE ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

While January is flooded with detoxes, fasting protocols, and SkinnyTok extremes that rarely last past a few weeks, this episode focuses on an evidence-based habit that actually supports satiety, blood sugar balance, gut health, and sustainable weight regulation. I break down why fiber is one of the most under-consumed nutrients despite its massive benefits — and why prioritizing it is a far better use of your energy than chasing restrictive trends. This excerpt comes from Part 1, Chapter 2: Goodbye Diets, Hello Satiety and Your Healthiest Weight, and offers a grounded, realistic entry point into nourishing your body without falling back into diet culture traps. The Hunger Crushing Combo Method:The Simple Secret to Eating Well Without Ever Dieting Again by Abbey Sharp RD • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase: Amazon Barnes & Noble Amazon Kindle Apple Books Google Play Kobo Apple Books (Audiobook) Audible abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters: Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books: Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book Protein 101 E-Book 👋 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchen TikTok: @abbeyskitchen YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen Blog: abbeyskitchen.com Book: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In this life, you can't win.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  When the world gets you down.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  No!

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Shwing!

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 0:13Abbey Sharp?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  We're not worthy!

• 0:22Speaker 01

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 0:31Abbey Sharp?

  Some participants in the fiber group, who assumedly had very active thriving microbiomes, lost as much as 400 calories per day. That alone could create a big enough calorie deficit to result in almost a full pound of fat loss per week. The more good bacteria and the more diverse the party down there, the more calories they can gobble up.

• 0:58Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call it the charlatan spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Guys, this is a super exciting day for me because it is officially book launch day. Yay! So, the hunger-crushing combo method, the baby that I have been growing and coddling and nursing day and night for the past two years is finally here, and I am so excited about you getting your hands on it. So, as I have been doing, I'm going to be leaving links in the show notes for where you can purchase the book, whether you prefer an audiobook, an ebook for reading on your

• 1:42Abbey Sharp?

  devices, or a physical hard copy. You can also check out your local Barnes and Nobles or other bookstores if you prefer to support a brick and mortar location. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'm going to be giving you a sneak peek into one section of the book about fiber. I chose this excerpt because we are now in like full-blown New Year's resolution mode, which, if you're listening to my podcast right now, has Has probably burned you more than once. And perhaps you're feeling tempted by the call of the all liquid detox systems, the punishing skinny talk mantras, the biohacking fasting protocols, or something even more outrageous that I haven't even heard of yet,

• 2:26Abbey Sharp?

  which you are totally welcome to send my way to dismantle, of course. But social media's idea of a good diet is almost never something you could or really should do long term. Never mind past the third week of January. But you know what you absolutely should do? Eat more fiber. I know it's not exactly the most sexy advice, but honestly, someone has got to get fiber the same PR agent that protein got, because only around 5% of North Americans are getting enough. In the book, I talk about the many benefits of fiber between a variety of the chapters, including for blood sugar management, heart health, how it affects the gut microbiome,

• 3:10Abbey Sharp?

  and the Whole Food Matrix Super Stuffed Micronutrient Package Deal that you get when you choose more high fiber foods like fruits and veg. But since the new year tends to focus its sights on losing weight above all else, I'm going to share a section of the book about some of the ways that it helps us do just that. And hopefully, this might just give you that extra push to prioritize this critical nutrient over the juice cleanses, carnivore diets, and fasting protocols that ironically do not. What a damn shame. So this excerpt is found in Part 1, Chapter 2, Goodbye Diets, Hello Satiety, and Your Healthiest Weight.

• 3:55Abbey Sharp?

  Fabulous fiber, the slow digesting volumizer. There is a reason that fiber-rich foods like salads are also a mainstay across most popular diets. Research consistently shows that a diet rich in high-fiber fruits and vegetables improves weight loss and prevents weight gain. According to one 24-year study, each additional daily Daily serving of fruit yielded a .53 pound drop in body weight, and each additional daily serving of veggies yielded a .25 pound drop in body weight over four years. None of that should come as a surprise.

• 4:34Abbey Sharp?

  And yet, North Americans are notoriously lacking in their commitment to a produce-rich, fiber-full life. According to our dietary guidelines, we want to aim for around 14 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories we eat. So on average, that's 25 grams of fiber per day for women and 38 grams for men. In reality, most adults are consuming between 10 to 15 grams a day. It is a miracle any of us poop. But bathroom benefits aside, fiber is uniquely designed to help support a healthy weight in a number of important ways related to its effect on digestion, absorption, hormones,

• 5:18Abbey Sharp?

  and the gut microbiome. Digestion. Unlike naked carbs, which are broken down into glucose and absorbed by your body quickly to provide energy, AKA calories, fiber passes through our digestive system largely unaltered. Bacteria have the capacity to digest and utilize these fibers as their fuel, but humans lack the enzymes to break them down. So, once our bacteria have had their fill, they end up excreted as waste. If you recall from Chapter 1, there are two types of fiber: insoluble fiber, which does not dissolve in water and therefore adds bulk to stool, and soluble fiber, which

• 6:02Abbey Sharp?

  forms a gel-like substance as it moves through the gut. Both add volume and bulk, and typically a lot of water, that physically distend your stomach and move the food more slowly through the digestive tract. Remember that vagus nerve? Well, the vagus nerve loves fiber. Just think about the last time you ate a BAS, AKA a big-ass salad. Hopefully, there was some protein and fats in there for satiety and satisfaction, but the base of that bowl was probably greens and other vegetables. In other words, it was a motherload of fiber, bulk, and fluid. And simply from volume alone, you probably felt really full.

• 6:48Abbey Sharp?

  Absorption. Slow-sally fiber, along with other HCCs, protein and fat, also creates a mini traffic jam in your gut, preventing the rapid absorption of sugars from the gut into your bloodstream. This means that you don't get a blood sugar spike or a subsequent blood sugar crash and hanger to follow, making it easier to maintain a calorie deficit. Appetite hormones. Fiber takes between four and 10 hours to finally reach the colon. And during its lengthy journey to the ivory throne, it triggers the cells in your gastrointestinal tract to release a cocktail of our BFF fullness hormones.

• 7:32Abbey Sharp?

  Namely, it reduces the hunger hormone ghrelin and pumps out the satiety hormones leptin, GLP-1, peptide YY, and cholecystokinin. Calorie density. The indigestibility of fiber means you're not only eating a lot of bulk that makes you feel physically full for longer, but also that you're full on very few calories. For the most part, fiber-rich foods have the lowest calorie density of all the things we eat. Calorie density refers to the amount of energy or calories per unit of weight or volume in a food or beverage. Foods with high-calorie density

• 8:17Abbey Sharp?

  contain a large number of calories in a small package, whereas foods with low-calorie density provide very little calories for a large volume of food. For example, a high-calorie-density food such as Ben & Jerry's, Netflix, and Chilled contains 200 calories for a pathetic third-cup serving size. Hilarious, right? But if you tried to eat an equivalent amount of calories in spinach, your jaw would lock before you could finish the 30-cup serving. I'm absolutely not recommending anyone attempt that miserable feat, but this is one of the main reasons that it's much harder to overeat spinach than ice cream.

• 9:03Abbey Sharp?

  As world-renowned obesity researcher Kevin Hall points out, calorie density is the strongest factor associated with how many calories someone eats in a meal. If your body needs 2,000 calories to thrive, it is going to be really hard to dupe it into thinking it's full on 1,000 calories because, at the end of the day, total calories still do matter. But at least in the transient short term, the volume and calorie density of the meal actually play a significant role in helping us feel full.

• 9:44Abbey Sharp?

  Research suggests that the total weight of food that we eat every day to feel full is generally pretty consistent day to day. In other words, if you have a big appetite, you might only feel satisfied if you fill a large dinner plate at every meal. However, even if the volume of the food on the plate remains unchanged, you can manipulate the total calories you eat in the day by tweaking their calorie density. The fewer calories in each bite of food, the fewer calories you're likely to consume in a meal, across the day, and over time.

• 10:29Abbey Sharp?

  This is what I mean when I say that a specific food has the best satiety bang for its caloric buck. This concept of calorie density helps explain a lot of scientific findings related to weight loss success. For example, it explains why highly-processed food consumption is linked to weight gain, whereas a whole-food, unprocessed diet, packed with fiber-rich fruits and vegetables, is linked to weight loss. Research consistently shows that folks who eat low-calorie-density foods report greater fullness and weight loss on fewer calories without ever needing to meticulously calculate or count.

• 11:13Abbey Sharp?

  That's the goal here, people. No counting, no obsessing, just balance that feels good. That said, calories still play a role in satiety, and eating a low-calorie-density diet can really only take you so far. The premise of volume eating large amounts of low-calorie foods can easily be misused, because a girl can't live on salad alone. While you might feel full in the moment, by the end of the day or several days of this trickery, your brain will catch on that it's been bamboozled into believing that lettuce is a good energizing meal.

• 11:54Abbey Sharp?

  Thankfully, that is where fiber sidekicks, protein, and fat, will come into play. Sustainable weight loss isn't just about controlling hunger at one meal. It's about feeling satiated and satisfied for life. The low-calorie density of fiber-rich foods as it relates to its slow digestion, volume, and water content all play an important role in promoting satiety. And researchers in Australia have actually attempted to categorize foods in terms of their fullness-promoting potential by ranking them in their satiety index. White bread, a naked carb,

• 12:36Abbey Sharp?

  was considered the standard that everything else was judged against. Not surprisingly, an extra-sugary slice of cake was 33% less satiating than white bread, whereas a serving of boiled potatoes, which are rich in fiber and low in calorie density, was three times more satiating. In other words, you'd feel at least three times fuller by eating potatoes than a naked carb. Looks like it's time to rebrand the spud as a satiety superstar.

• 13:22Abbey Sharp?

  Our mighty microbiome. There is another interesting perk to fiber that helps you manage your weight. Its role in feeding the gut microbiome, or the community of microorganisms living in the human gastrointestinal tract. It has been estimated that the average human gut harbors anywhere from 100 trillion to over 1,000 trillion diverse species of bacteria. As we've briefly established, humans lack the enzymes to effectively digest and absorb any calories from the fiber components of plant foods. But that BAS that you had for lunch is like a Michelin star meal to our friendly bugs.

• 14:05Abbey Sharp?

  To start, we need to clarify a few important, yet very confusing terms that all sound the same but are actually quite different. Probiotics are the beneficial bacteria in our gut. Common genera of probiotics that you might find in foods and supplements include lactobacillus, bifidobacterium, streptococcus, enterococcus, Escherichia, bacillus, and Saccharomyces, technically a yeast. These are further classified into specific species like lactobacillus rhamnosus, a bacteria commonly found in yogurt, and even further into strains like lactobacillus rhamnosus

• 14:49Abbey Sharp?

  GG. If you're wondering how to get more beneficial probiotics to begin with, there are some key food sources that you can add to your day, most notably fermented foods. Fermented foods include yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, miso, tempeh, sourdough bread, and natto. Obviously, I'm a dietitian, so food will always come first. And while incorporating more fermented foods into our diet has been shown to offer several health benefits, like improved digestion, enhanced immunity, and greater weight. For a clinical dose of probiotics, consider adding a high-quality probiotic supplement with at least 2 billion CFUs

• 15:34Abbey Sharp?

  of bacteria. Prebiotics are the fiber-packed fuel that feeds the good bacteria. Some of the best sources of prebiotics include most fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. A few that bacteria particularly like include green bananas, garlic, asparagus, and oats. But much more on that in Chapter 3. Postbiotics are the beneficial byproducts from the fermentation, or breaking down of fiber, by our gut bacteria. Common examples include vitamin B12, folate, vitamin K, short-chain fatty acids, or SCFAs, and certain amino acids. The health of our microbiome is associated with the health

• 16:17Abbey Sharp?

  of virtually every other organ and system in our body: digestion, immunity, brain health, mood, hormones, heart health, metabolism, and so much more. One of the more evolving areas of research is the link between our gut microbiome and our body weight. Research consistently shows that the gut microbiome of larger-bodied folks simply looks different from that of those who are thin. Studies also suggest that losing excess body fat is associated with increased gut microbial diversity. Here's how fiber fits in. Let's just say you had a simple meal of chickpea pasta with butter.

• 17:00Abbey Sharp?

  The fat in the butter and the starches and protein in the pasta get broken down in your stomach, digested, and absorbed to be used as energy for your cells. But the fiber component, or the prebiotics, in the pasta moves along to the intestines, where your gut bacteria, the probiotics, await their feast. The more fuel for the probiotics, the more diverse and plentiful the microbiome, the lower the chances of dysbiosis, or the disruption of a healthy, diverse microbiome, and the fewer risk factors for obesity.

• 17:36Abbey Sharp?

  One of the potential mechanisms that explains the association between body weight and specific species of gut bacteria comes down to how different types of foods' calories are absorbed and utilized. Despite what common weight loss dogma will have you believe, not all calories are processed the same. Our ability to manage our weight is not so much about how many calories a package says a food contains, AKA how many available calories are in the food, but rather how many of those calories we can actually use and absorb. And that depends on the structure of the food and the vitality of our gut bacteria.

• 18:19Abbey Sharp?

  In the simplest terms, imagine our body and our microbes are in a tug-of-war to fight over the calories in the food that we eat. The more simple and processed the food is, as with naked carbs, the more easily our body can extract calories from it. In contrast, higher-fiber foods are digested much more slowly, so they can make their way to the large intestine where our microbes await their feast, bypassing our ability to absorb all of their calories. So if achieving a healthy weight is the goal, this is a fight we want to lose.

• 18:59Abbey Sharp?

  The effect of diet and microbiome quality was demonstrated in a very rigorous metabolic ward study where they gave one subject group a diet packed with prebiotic fiber, so resistant starch, fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains, while the other group was given a diet rich in low-fiber, ultra-processed foods and naked carbs, like white bread, ground beef, American cheese, cheese puffs, cookies, and deli meats. When the researchers looked at the participants' stool samples, they found that the high-fiber group "lost" on average 217 calories per day, while the processed food group lost only half of that.

• 19:43Abbey Sharp?

  Some participants in the fiber group Who assumedly had very active thriving microbiomes, lost as much as 400 calories per day. That alone could create a big enough calorie deficit to result in almost a full pound of fat loss per week. The more good bacteria and the more diverse the party down there, the more calories they can gobble up. And if you're thinking, well, wouldn't losing calories just make you hungrier for more calories? That is the beautiful thing about fiber. As we've established, fiber is super satiating. So despite losing the fight for some of those calories, our brains still register our guts as full.

• 20:28Abbey Sharp?

  And this is just part of fiber's healthy weight superpowers. This study also found that in addition to augmenting how many calories participants absorbed in their day, feeding the gut bacteria also produced short-chain fatty acids, a powerful postbiotic, which then increased the gut's release of the satiety hormone GLP-1. The more prebiotics there are for our probiotics to ferment, the more satiety-boosting postbiotics. I know, a lot of biotics in the house. In Chapter 4, we're going to get more into why eating a varied diet is important for our own overall nutrition status.

• 21:11Abbey Sharp?

  But getting a wide range of plant foods into our diet rotation helps to ensure all of our gut critters are satisfied and well-fed. I probably didn't have to tell you that eating more salad would help to support a healthy weight. But now you've got a motherload of cool dinner party factoids to explain why. Bottom line, eat more high-fiber plants.

• 21:40Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, so friends, have we busted out the veggie chili and like the bean salad yet? Because I'm really hoping this inspired you to put some more plants on your plate today. But in the book, I walk through how the other two hunger crushing compounds, protein and healthy fat, also scientifically benefit weight loss. I also have a comprehensive cheat sheet of all of the most calorically efficient sources of each of these critical meal components. Meaning, if weight loss is your goal, how can you get the most fiber bang for your caloric buck? You'll have to check out part three, chapter two, for the full rundown. But to get you started with fiber specifically, here are some of my favorite options to help

• 22:25Abbey Sharp?

  you meet that 25 to 38 gram goal. So a half a cup of cooked lentils or one cup of raspberries offers eight grams of fiber. One cup of cooked barley offers six grams. And one cup of cooked broccoli, half an avocado, or a tablespoon of chia seeds offers five grams. Yes, getting in your fiber can take some intention, but if we are focusing our sights on high volume, whole food plants, it will become a lot more intuitive. If you're still feeling overwhelmed about where or how to even get started, the Hunger Crushing Combo Method walks you through everything you need to know with loads of resources,

• 23:08Abbey Sharp?

  tips, and actionable strategies. It offers the macro big picture on nutrition while also giving loads of juicy science for those of you with a thirst for specifics. I honestly am so excited to hear what you all think. And for a limited time only, if you post on social media about the Hunger Crushing Combo Method and tag me using the hashtag #HungerCrushingComboMethod, you will be entered into a draw to win one of 50 New Theory Protein Powder prize packs. So there you go, a convenient source of one of the most critical hunger crushing compounds delivered right to your door. Well, folks, I love you all, and I'm so, so grateful for all of your support.

• 23:51Abbey Sharp?

  Signing off with Science and SAS and so much excitement about this launch, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  In this life, you can't win.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  When the world gets you down.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  No!

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Schwing!

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 24:19Abbey Sharp?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  We're not worthy!

• 24:28Speaker 01

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.