Having trouble meeting your daily fibre requirements? Try these 7tricks for sneaking more fibre into your diet.

1. Sneak fibre into your smoothies: with its creamy overtones of a milkshake, most of us love a good smoothie, but find excuses not to make it at home. Yet these drinks are a great vehicle for adding fiber-filled ingredients to your diet, and all you need is a blender.

Put your smoothie ingredients in the blender the night before and store it in the fridge. The next morning, all you have to do is add ice and water and blend for a few seconds and breakfast is served. You can also add 1 to 2 tablespoons of wheat or oat bran to increase your drink’s fibre content.

2. Eat fiber-rich foods at the office: some of us scoot out of the house in the morning without eating anything, let alone fiber. If that sounds like you, try bringing high-fiber foods to nosh on once you get to work. Put milk into a glass jar and cereal topped with dried fruit into a container the night before. It’s an easy breakfast to eat while skimming through your email in the morning.

3. Swap white foods for whole-grain options: do you crave carbs more than any other food type? You can still increase your fiber and whole grain intake by avoiding the white versions. Limit white bread, white rice, white pasta, as they tend to be more processed, and lower in fiber and healthy nutrients than their whole-grain equivalents.

Include sweet potatoes or yams in your diet instead. Switch to whole-grain bread, whole-wheat pasta and brown or wild rice. If you like basmati rice there is a brown version. Why not try whole-wheat couscous too? Not everyone immediately loves the stronger flavors and different textures of whole-grain foods, but there are ways to ease into the transition. If your family has a hard time adjusting to whole grain pasta or rice, cook half whole grain with your regular choice, until you become used to the difference between the two.

4. Eat more fruit and veggies: leave the bags of chips and chocolate bars on the shelf and make the effort to buy your favorite fruits and vegetables. Put them in a bowl on your desk or on your coffee table so you’ll reach for them as a snack.

Hate cutting up fruit? Don’t shy away from the convenience-packaged offerings at the store. Even though they are more costly, they are still a better alternative to sugary snacks or baked goods, or indeed not eating produce at all. Fruits and vegetables contain lots of fiber so snack on those instead of croissants and muffins.

Try replacing your morning juice with a piece of fresh fruit to add about three grams of fiber as well as a host of other nutrients. Still, some of us have an upper limit to how many raw vegetables we can eat. If that sounds like your household, sneak them in during meal preparation. Add pureed vegetables to soups, sauces and casseroles for extra fiber.

5. Eat more beans: beans are plentiful, easy to store in either canned or dry form, and are a seriously healthy and inexpensive way to boost your nutrition bottom line. Beans, lentils and chickpeas are packed with fiber and protein. Why not add some to a grilled chicken or salmon salad? Make your family’s favorite meat-based chili with extra kidney beans, and try lentil soup which is high in fiber and tastes terrific.

6. Add flax seeds to your meals: they are brown and approximately the size of sesame seeds, are readily found in the grocery store, sometimes alongside prepackaged nuts. When flax seeds are fresh, they impart a mild flavor and crunchy texture to foods they’re added to.

Add one to two tablespoons of flax seeds to cereal, yogurts and salads and even casseroles for yet another healthy source of fiber. You can also blend them into your favorite smoothie recipe.

7. Avoid peeling produce: the skin and membranes of apples, pears, potatoes, and many other fruits and veggies are where most of the fiber is, so resist your child’s request to peel things. Just be sure to rinse produce thoroughly before serving. If you’re concerned about pesticide residue and can afford organic produce, that’s a fine option (but you should still rinse it well, as many people may have touched it since it left the tree or bush, and it may not be totally pesticide-free).

Take the Fiber Challenge One Step Further with Probiotics

By adding more fiber to your diet, you’ll not only help your fat loss efforts (stay full longer), you’ll greatly decrease your risk of disease, and improve your digestive health. To enhance these three benefits even further, I strongly recommend a probiotic.

In fact, there are more than 200 studies linking inadequate probiotic levels to more than 170 different health issues, including obesity and weight gain. Virtually every study performed on the obese population analyzing gut bacteria found higher instances of “bad” bacteria and lower levels of probiotics (the “good” bacteria) within these individuals.

Researchers believe that probiotics may help you slim down because they make your intestinal walls less permeable. As a result, fewer of the molecules that may contribute to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and glucose intolerance are able to enter your bloodstream.

To get the slimming effect, the researchers suggest not only eating more fiber, but also eating more foods that contain probiotics (like yogurt, kale, and cellery) and/or taking a probiotic supplement.