Postpartum University® Podcast

The Fiber Paradox: Why Raw Veggies and High-Fiber Foods Sabotage Postpartum Recovery EP 246

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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Let's expose the standard advice that is making new mothers miserable: the push for high-fiber, raw fruits and vegetables immediately postpartum. It sounds healthy, but it's the root cause of crippling postpartum bloating, gas, and poor nutrient absorption!

Get ready for a physiological truth: the postpartum digestive system is temporarily compromised. Loading it with complex plant matter is sabotage. You'll uncover the ancient wisdom of traditional cultures (Chinese, Ayurvedic) that prioritized warm, cooked, easily digestible foods for thousands of years. This episode is your guide to strategic postpartum nutrition that maximizes healing and finally ends the cycle of depletion and discomfort.

Check out this episode on the blog HERE. 

Key time stamps: 

  • 02:50: Why the postpartum digestive system is temporarily compromised.
  • 04:05: The body prioritizes critical healing over complex digestion. 
  • 05:40: Traditional cultures prioritize warm, cooked, easily digestible foods. 
  • 07:15: Why cold, raw foods dampen the digestive "fire." 
  • 08:20: The flaw in modern nutrition: ignoring digestibility and absorption. 
  • 08:50: Fiber requires significant digestive capacity the postpartum body lacks. 
  • 10:10: How high-fiber foods cause bloating, gas, and inflammation in a compromised gut. 
  • 11:00: Raw vegetables are problematic: they require high energy and are "cooling." 
  • 12:50: The benefits of cooking: increased nutrient bioavailability and reduced anti-nutrients. 
  • 13:30: The real causes of postpartum constipation (hormones, fear, magnesium deficiency). 
  • 14:55: How high fiber impairs nutrient absorption (binding effect) for depleted mothers. 
  • 16:00: The correct progression: simple/cooked → complex/raw. 
  • 17:00: Immediate relief: Switching to cooked, warm food resolves bloating in days. 
  • 17:55: The importance of respecting digestive capacity and natural progression.

NEXT STEPS:

SPEAKER_01:

The postpartum care system is failing, leaving countless mothers struggling with depression, anxiety, and autoimmune conditions. I'm Miranda Power, and I've helped thousands of providers use holistic care practices to heal their clients at the root. Subscribe now and join us in addressing what modern medicine overlooks so that you can give your clients real lasting solutions for lifelong well-being. Welcome back to the Postpartum University podcast. I'm Miranda Bauer, and today we're tackling something that sounds healthy, but is actually sabotaging postpartum recovery. And it's the fiber first approach to postpartum nutrition. You know the advice: eat lots of fruits and veggies, get your fiber, prevent constipation, and it sounds reasonable. Fiber is very healthy. We should be eating a lot of raw veggies and high fiber foods immediately postpartum, right? Because it is healthy, especially because it's so uh common to experience constipation, bloating, and gas and postpartum. But no, no, none of that is okay. And it's not normal to experience constipation, bloating, and gas, and it is not recommended at all to start eating fiber to fix it. Actually, that can be harmful to the gut. Not because fiber is bad. It is not, but because timing matters, digestibility matters, and the postpartum digestive system is not ready for the modern high fiber raw food approach that gets pushed onto new moms. Traditional cultures knew this. For thousands of years across every continent, postpartum care has emphasized warm, cooked, easily digestible foods first. Fiber meals are important, but they do come a little bit later, and they come gradually as the digestive system heals and strengthens, and it comes in certain specific forms. Never, ever raw fruits and veggies. But modern nutrition advice has flipped the script, and mothers are paying the price with bloating and gas and digestive distress and poor nutrient absorption when they need it most. So today we're diving into what actually happens to digestion postpartum, why the traditional approach makes physiological sense, and how to integrate fiber appropriately without sabotaging recovery. Let's start with what's actually happening to the digestive system after birth, because most providers don't fully understand this. During pregnancy, the digestive system has been physically compromised to the growing uterus. The organs have been pushed out of position, blood flow has been redirected to support the baby, digestive enzymes and gastric acid production have been altered by pregnancy hormones, and so has the gut microbiome. And then after birth, the body is prioritizing several urgent tasks. The contracting of the uterus back down to prevent more blood loss or to prevent bleeding out. We've got to heal any tears or incisions. We're rebuilding blood volume, recalibrating hormones, producing breast milk. Digestion is not the priority. The body is allocating limited energy and resources to more critical functions that keep a mother alive and healing, and then keep baby alive. So this means digestive capacity is temporarily reduced. So enzyme production is lower, gut motility is slower, the entire digestive process requires more energy than the body can easily spare. And the gut microbiome has shifted so much in pregnancy and then again in birth that it we can actually see, based on a person's gut microbiota panel whether or not somebody is newly postpartum. That's how much the gut shifts and changes. So in this vulnerable digestive state, we're telling moms to load up on raw veggies and high fiber foods and a complex to digest plant matter. It's like expecting someone who just ran a marathon to immediately go rock climbing. The body needs time to recover first. And every traditional postpartum system, Chinese, Ayurvedic, Latin American, African, European, they emphasize the same principles in early postpartum nutrition. Warm foods, not cold or room temperature, cooked foods, not raw, easily digestible, simple preparations, few ingredients that are liquid-based, so soups, broths, stews, and later gentle fibers from well-cooked veggies and soaked grains, not raw salads. This isn't cultural superstition. This is a collective wisdom accumulated over thousands of years of observing what actually helps mothers heal. In traditional Chinese medicine, the postpartum period is seen as a time when the digestive fire is weakened and it needs to be slowly rekindled. So cold, raw foods dampen this fire, and warm cooked foods support it. In Ariveda, postpartum is dominated by vata energy, cold, dry, irregular. The antidote is warm, moist, grounding foods. Raw foods are considered too cooling and difficult to digest. In Latin American traditions, mothers are kept warm, fed warm foods, and protected from cold, including cold foods, during this period, this 40-day postpartum period. And modern nutrition science dismissed all of this as primitive superstition. Their language doesn't necessarily match the scientific data that we have. So we insisted that, you know, that stuff doesn't matter. What they are claiming to be true is actually not true because the way in which they explain it just doesn't add up to actual science. And so we insisted that raw vegetables are healthier because they preserve enzymes and vitamins. And we put fiber as the solution to postpartum constipation. But we ignored a fundamental truth that the healthiest food in the world doesn't help if your body can't digest and absorb it. Let's talk specifically about fiber because there's a massive confusion about this. Fiber is important. I am not anti-fiber. Fiber is amazing. It supports gut health, it feeds beneficial bacteria, it promotes regular bowel movements, helps regulate blood sugar, it binds to toxins for elimination. It's amazing. And most of those people who are living in the US, for example, are lacking significant fiber intake. Many of their issues would disappear if they had more fiber in their diet. But fiber also requires significant digestive capacity to process. There are two types of fiber: soluble fiber, so that dissolves in water, forms a gel, slows digestion, and then insoluble soluble fiber, the fiber, it doesn't dissolve, it adds bulk, it speeds transit. So both types require a well-functioning digestive system to handle properly. When you eat high fiber foods, raw vegetables, salads, whole grains, legumes, your digestive system has to work hard to break down those plant cell walls, process the complex carb, and extract the nutrients. That takes energy, significant energy. Energy that the postpartum body doesn't have to spare. More importantly, if the digestive system is compromised, high fiber foods actually cause problems like bloating and gas, cramping and discomfort, binding of minerals, so making them unavailable for absorption, slower transient time, actually worsening constipation, increased inflammation from poor plant matter. So we're giving mothers advice that can actually make their digestive issues worse while simultaneously impairing nutrient absorption when they desperately need every nutrient they can get. Raw vegetables are particularly problematic in early postpartum. Yes, raw foods contain enzymes that help with digestion. They are so complex that the food item, the raw veggie itself, has enzymes to help it break down. But those enzymes primarily help the plant digest itself, not necessarily help you digest the plant. So raw vegetables require significant chewing, acid, and enzyme production to break down. They're harder on the digestive system than cooked vegetables. They're also cooling energetically, which might sound really woo-woo, but there's actual physiology here. So raw foods require more body heat to bring up to body temperature for digestion. And this draws energy away from healing processes. Cooked vegetables does several important things. It breaks down tough cell walls and it makes nutrients more accessible. It deactivates anti-nutrients like oxalates and lectins. It increases bioavailability of mini nutrients. It reduces the energy needed for digestion. And it makes the food more soothing to the digestive tract. But modern nutrition advice treats cooking as destroying nutrients when actually cooking makes mini nutrients more available, not less. And one of the main reasons fiber gets pushed so hard in postpartum is constipation. And yes, postpartum constipation is real and common, but the solution isn't necessarily more fiber. Postpartum constipation happens for several reasons. The hormonal changes, dehydration, especially in breastfeeding, iron supplementation, which I do not recommend in pill form, perineal trauma, either from actual trauma that has happened, fear of trauma happening, or fear of having a bowel movement and your insides falling out. That's very, very common. Reduced physical activity, weakened abdominal muscles, and magnesium deficiency, one of the most common deficiencies in postpartum. Notice what's not on that list? Lack of fiber. In fact, adding loss of fiber to an already sluggish, dehydrated, depleted digestive system can make constipation worse by creating bulk without the water and the motility needed to move it through. So it can actually become painful. And here's something most providers don't understand that the high fiber diets can actually impair nutrient absorption. Fiber binds to minerals like iron and zinc and calcium and magnesium, and it makes it less available for absorption. This is called the binding effect. So for a non-postpartum person with adequate nutrient stores, this might not be a problem. The body can compensate. But for a postpartum mother who's already depleted, who's desperately needing more molecules of iron and zinc and magnesium that she can absorb, this binding effect can be dangerous. And we're telling mothers to eat high fiber foods to be healthy, and we're simultaneously making it harder for them to absorb the nutrients they need to heal. It's backwards. Traditional postpartum nutrition prioritizes easily digestible, nutrient-dense foods first. Foods where nutrients are highly bioavailable, foods that don't require extensive digestive work, like bone broth, cooked vegetables, right? Soups, stews, these foods maximize nutrient absorption with minimal digestive effort. I can tell you how many postpartum moms I've worked with who have suffered from severe bloating and digestive distress because they were following like these healthy eating advice that included, you know, big salads and raw vegetables and lots of whole grains and high fiber smoothies, all these things that are supposed to be healthy. And then they're miserable, they're bloated, they're uncomfortable, they're gassy, they think something's wrong with them. Maybe they have IBS, maybe they have food intolerances, maybe their gut is damaged. Sometimes the answer is so much simpler. Their digestive system can't handle high fiber, raw, complex foods right now. And when we switch them to warm, cooked, easily digestible foods, the bloating often resolves within days. Their energy improves, their mood stabilizes, their nutrient status improves, their nervous system feels more regulated. And when that starts to hit that level, then all of a sudden we can start adding in more things that are fiber. And that when we're adding in more things that are fiber, we are supporting that body and feeling really cozy and comfortable, helping that microbiota grow and develop into its post-pregnancy, post post uh pregnancy, postpartum state. We're helping turn on those enzymes again. We're teaching the body that it's okay. And as the body feels safe to do it, then we can add in more and more and more. That's how it goes. There's a progression from extremely easy to digest toward more complex, from warm and cooked toward more raw and raw and cooling. It's it's very simple to diverse. And this gives the digestive system time to heal and strengthen before asking it to handle more complex foods. And I want to address something very common that I hear. But won't cooked foods lose their nutrients? Some heat-sensitive vitamins, like vitamin C, specifically vitamin C, are reduced when cooking. But all other nutrients, most nutrients, become more bioavailable with cooking. And a nutrient in cooked foods that you can digest and absorb is worth more than a nutrient in raw food that's passed through undigested. One thing I often hear too is like, but I feel fine eating raw fruits and vegetables. And that's great. I want to address this. Some women do, but many, many women don't. And we're not acknowledging that or giving them alternatives. And if you're thriving on raw vegetables and you feel really great, you don't have any symptoms within your body, keep going. But if you're struggling, cooked foods is going to be a better option for you. What we're really talking about today is respecting the postpartum digestive systems capacity and progression. Modern nutrition advice treats all bodies as the same. The same dietary recommendations apply whether you're a college athlete, a sedentary office worker, pregnant, postpartum, elderly. The body is in different states and it has different capabilities and needs. The postpartum body needs time to heal before it can effectively handle complex to digest foods. This doesn't mean postpartum mothers eat a restricted diet forever. It means respecting the natural progression from simple toward complex, from cooked toward to raw, right? From gentle to robust. And traditional cultures understood this instinctively. Modern science is slowly finally catching up. So the fiber first approach in postpartum nutrition, I tell you, is backwards, not because fiber is bad, but because the timing and preparation of the matter. So postpartum moms need warm, cooked, easily digestible foods first. That maximize nutrient absorption with minimal digestive effort. And then fiber can be introduced gradually from cooked sources as the digestive system heals and strengthens. This isn't deprivation. This is strategic nutrition that supports healing rather than sabotaging it. And cultural traditions got this right thousands of years ago, right? It's time modern nutrition advice caught up. Thank you so, so much for listening. If you want to learn more about proper nutrition timing and progression, visit postpartum utheletter you.com for more information about our postpartum nutrition certification program. Remember, when we heal mothers, we heal the world.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much for being a part of this crucial conversation. I know you're dedicated to advancing postpartum care. And if you're ready to dig deeper, come join us on our newsletter where I share exclusive insights, resources, and the latest tools to help you make a lasting impact on postpartum health. Sign up at postpartum you the letter you.com, which is in the show notes. And if you found today's episode valuable, please leave a review to help us reach more providers like you. Together, we're building a future where mothers are fully supported and thriving.

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Maranda Bower

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