The dumbest-sounding trend I've come around on

For cholesterol, we know that soluble fiber lowers your LDL and your ApoB. Roughly every 5 grams a day knocks LDL down about 5 or 6 points. That won't replace a statin, but it stacks with everything else you're doing, and it costs you nothing but groceries.

For blood sugar, viscous fiber in people with type 2 diabetes lowered HbA1c by almost half a point and dropped fasting glucose meaningfully. That's a medication-sized effect from food, and it showed up at around 13 grams a day.

Then there's your gut. The fiber you can't digest is what your bacteria eat, and when they ferment it they produce butyrate, which is the preferred fuel for the cells lining your colon. When you don't feed them, they start feeding on your mucus layer instead. That's the piece a zero-fiber diet has no answer for, and it's the one that eventually catches up with many "true carnivores".

Here's the part that surprised me

The average American eats less than 17 grams of fiber a day. The recommendation is 25 for women and 38 for men. Only about 5 percent of men and 9 percent of women actually get there.

So when you see someone online eating 30 to 40 grams and calling it fibermaxxing, they're not doing something extreme. They're doing something normal, and it just looks extreme because almost nobody does it. Most of us aren't going from healthy to obsessive. We're climbing out of a hole.

Not all fiber does the same job

This is where most advice falls apart. Telling someone to eat more fiber is like telling them to take more vitamins. It matters which one.

Psyllium is where I'd start almost anyone. It's gentle, barely fermented, so it doesn't make you gassy, and it does something unusual: it firms up loose stool and softens hard stool. It also lowers LDL. If you're going from nothing to something, start here.

Beta-glucan is the one in oats and barley, and it's the reason oats got their cholesterol reputation. If ApoB is the number you're trying to move, this is your target.

Resistant starch is the butyrate one. You get it from cooled potatoes and rice, green bananas, and legumes. If your goal is your gut lining and your microbiome, this is the strongest lever you have.

Inulin comes from onions, garlic, asparagus, and chicory root, and it's the most powerful prebiotic on this list. It's also the one most likely to leave you bloated and miserable if you rush it. Worth getting to, but earn it.

Insoluble fiber from wheat bran and vegetable skins mostly adds bulk and keeps things moving. Useful, but it's not doing much for your cholesterol or your bacteria.

The honest summary is that variety beats volume. Someone getting 30 grams from six different foods is probably doing better than someone getting 45 from a single powder.

A few things that will save you grief

Start by finding out where you actually are. Track it for three days (take pictures of your meals and put them into ChatGPT), because almost everyone guesses high. If you're sitting at 15, your goal isn't 50, it's 25.

Then add about 5 grams a week and no more. Nearly everyone who tells me fiber destroys their stomach went from 15 grams to 40 over a weekend, and their gut bacteria never had a chance to adjust. Give it a few weeks and the bloating usually settles.

Drink more water as you go. Viscous fiber without enough fluid will constipate you worse than eating none at all, and this is the most common way people accidentally sabotage themselves.

Match the fiber to what you're actually trying to fix. Cholesterol means beta-glucan and psyllium. Gut health means resistant starch. Constipation means psyllium. Don't just grab a random supplement and hope.

And use food first. Supplements are useful for filling a specific gap, but whole foods bring water, minerals, polyphenols, and several kinds of fiber at once, and they make you chew and feel full. A scoop of powder in juice is the same number on paper and a very different thing in your body.

One caveat worth naming. If you have active inflammatory bowel disease, known strictures, gastroparesis, or you're on a low-FODMAP protocol, more fiber can genuinely make things worse. That's a conversation with your own doctor, not a newsletter.

If you do one thing

Track your fiber for three days. Don't change anything, just look. Most people are somewhere around 15 grams and have no idea, and you can't fix a number you've never seen.

I'm not here to tell you carnivore is bad, or that you need to eat 50 grams of fiber to be healthy. I'm telling you that I confused removing something harmful with adding something magical, and along the way I dropped one of the best-supported things you can do for your heart, your blood sugar, and your gut.

Fibermaxxing is a silly name for an idea that's about as boring and well-proven as nutrition gets. Most of us just aren't eating enough.

Stay healthy, Clay Moss, MD