A balanced diet is crucial to maintaining good health throughout your life, and one of the most important elements of a good diet is fiber. Eating a diet that includes fiber-rich foods can lower your blood sugar and cholesterol, among other benefits. Unfortunately, most men simply aren’t receiving the recommended daily dose of fiber needed to optimize your physical health. When you add more fiber to your diet, make sure you also increase your water intake!

So where can you get the fiber intake you need? Here are some of the top foods that provide you with tons of fiber.

Beans

Do you enjoy a hot bowl of chili? If so, I’ve got great news! Beans are an extremely powerful source of fiber. The great thing about chili is that you can toss together all kinds of different beans for the most fiber-rich meal possible. Everything from kidney beans to black beans, and white beans to garbanzo beans includes a high amount of fiber that can help ensure your bodily functions run smoothly.

Whole Wheat Grain Products 

Many people try to avoid carbs of all types when they switch to a healthier diet, but whole-wheat foods can actually bring positive nutritional value to a meal. For instance, whole-wheat bread and whole-wheat pasta both provide a larger amount of fiber than their refined, white counterparts. When wheat is refined, the grain coating is removed, along with the majority of nutrients and fiber offered by the wheat. So sticking to whole-wheat when it comes to carbs will help your reach your balanced dieting goals.

Vegetables

You’re probably already trying to increase your vegetable intake for extra vitamins, but here’s one more reason: many vegetables contain copious amounts of fiber. Broccoli, peas, spinach, and peppers, along with most other green vegetables, are sure to help you receive the recommended daily intake of fiber!

You probably know at least one or two people who have sworn off carbs and committed to the Paleo lifestyle. Based off of the diet that cavemen and women ate prior to the days of harvested wheat fields, the Paleo diet consists of meat and veggies, but cuts out foods that can only be attained through processing or farming, such as corn, wheat, and certain products that aren’t ‘grass-fed’; for instance, grass-fed butter is considered part of the diet. The Paleo diet can be confusing to someone who doesn’t know what the benefits are, but there are many ways that Paleo eating is good for your health.

No More Bloating

If you avoid carbs and salts that tend to lead to feelings of bloating and a bit of expansion in your stomach, you’ll soon find yourself rewarded with a smaller waist and flatter stomach. The Paleo diet also encourages increase fiber intake, which can help you lose weight, as well as increased water consumption, which helps keep your plumbing in working condition.

Load Up On Nutrients

The cornerstone habit of Paleo eating is to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into your diet to replace the missing grains. In addition to providing you with lots of fiber, vegetables and fruits offer an array of important nutrients that provide you with more energy, better skin and overall improved health. Of course, you don’t need to go fully Paleo to benefit from an increased vegetable intake!

Stay Full Longer

The amount of nutrients, healthy fat and protein that you attain from a balanced Paleo diet mean you will stay full for longer after a meal. Carbs, salt, and refined sugars tend to leave us feeling hungry again soon after eating. Stick to foods such as fish and nuts like almonds and you’ll find your hunger takes much longer to return, so you eat fewer calories overall but don’t have to starve yourself.

Eating well is difficult enough to figure out without misleading labels and false claims on food packaging. But we need to be aware that many of the so-called health snacks we enjoy are not all that good for us in reality. In fact, some of them are downright terrible for your body.

Here are a few of the unhealthiest foods to watch out for that marketers try to pass off as nutritious.

Energy Bars

For the average person, the only thing energy bars provide is a bunch of unnecessary calories. There isn’t any special ingredient in the bars that makes them better than other types of snacks, and they often contain a high amount of sugar, artificial flavouring, and are high processed. True, they can provide a quick boost of protein for a busy athlete, but make sure you read the labels carefully before blinding trusting any packaging that describes the bars as ‘healthy’.

Whole Wheat Bread

As an alternative to white bread or refined wheat as an ingredient in anything, whole wheat is certainly the lesser of two evils. If possible, you should reduce your wheat intake in general to limit the amount of gluten in your diet. Many people experience issues with digestion, such as bloating, as a result of the gluten they ingest from whole wheat products. There are also studies that suggest wheat fiber may cause a deficiency of Vitamin D.

Sports Drinks 

Unless you’re an overworked athlete who sweats profusely and doesn’t have a chance to refuel properly, keep sport drinks out of your repertoire of go-to drinks. The main ingredients in most sports drinks are water, electrolytes and sugar; the amount of sugar is more than most normal people need to add to their already sugar-saturated diets. Your best bet for a healthy drink, whether you’re working out of not, is plain old water.

Sometimes you can do everything right to prepare a healthy meal made from fresh, nutrient-rich ingredients, but you might blow it all by loading up on the wrong condiments! Don’t let unhealthy condiments detract from the nutritional value of your overall meal. No matter what food it is you’re dressing up, use these unhealthy sauces sparingly, or avoid them completely if possible. Here are the three unhealthiest condiments of all time that are probably still part of your diet:

Ketchup

Due to ketchup’s immense popularity, this is a tough fact for many people to swallow, but the red stuff simply isn’t good for you. Sure, it’s made from tomatoes—or rather, there are tomatoes involved somewhere along in the process—but its trademark savory sweetness should be a dead giveaway that ketchup is not the best option for a healthy diet. The most popular brands of ketchup contain oodles of high fructose corn syrup. Reconfigure how you perceive ketchup; it should be an accent or a treat rather than your main course with a hotdog on the side.

Maple Syrup

Although ketchup has a high amount of sugar, maple syrup is an even bigger offender. This delicious syrup is considered a staple for many waffle dishes and pancakes, but there are healthier alternatives you should consider before you soak your breakfast in maple syrup. Load up your waffles with fresh or frozen berries or scoop some applesauce with cinnamon onto your pancakes. 

Mayonnaise 

The high fat content in mayo makes is an obvious source of diet-sabotage. It’s such a common ingredient in many dishes and casseroles, and is often liberally applied to a sandwich without a second thought. You can control the fat content of your mayonnaise if you try to make your own at home, or use a different topping altogether.

Healthy Alternatives:

Pesto, mustard and guacamole are among the healthiest options for condiments and can be swapped in to replace ketchup or mayonnaise on sandwiches, burgers and other dishes. 

We’ve all heard that nighttime eating is bad for our bodies. And it makes sense, the closer to your bedtime you ingest food, the less time your body has to properly metabolize the food or burn off the excess energy and calories. But recent research has found several surprising new benefits to eating snacks later in the day that may make you reconsider eating habits. Here are the top potential benefits to the ‘bad-habit’ of late night snacking.

Reduced Hunger

It makes some sense that having a quick bite before bed can decrease your appetite first thing in the morning, but research from Florida State University suggests that feeling of fullness might last throughout the day. At least, in between balanced meals. Late night snacking might help improve your satiety in between your main meals the next day, which means you will be less likely to snack on junk food if you had a filling protein snack before bed last night.

Bigger Muscles

If you workout in the evening, late night snacking is practically a requirement after you come home from the gym. Lucky for you, research featured in the publication Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that men who ingested casein (the main protein provided by milk) 30 minutes prior to sleep, following a late night workout, experienced increased protein production.

Potential Weight Loss

A study conducted by Wayne State University discovered that eating cereal before bed may contribute to healthy weight loss. Participants who snacked on cereal before going to sleep lost about 2 pounds over the 4-week study; those who did not eat cereal before bed only lost half a pound.