High Fibre Diet Plan — How I'm Closing the 12g Gap at Casa Adora

I make kefir. I bake buckwheat sourdough. I write a gut health recipes hub. I eat sauerkraut, overnight oats, and pearl barley soup. This is my high fibre diet plan — or rather, it's the plan I thought I had. Until I counted.

And until recently, I was hitting around 18g of fibre a day. The same as the average British adult. Not the 30g the NHS recommends. The average.

That was a surprise.

The 12g Gap — Why a High Fibre Diet Plan Matters

According to NHS guidance, adults should aim for 30g of fibre a day. The average person in the UK manages around 18g. That 12g gap — every single day — is where most of us are quietly falling short on one of the most straightforward things we can do for our long-term health.

I thought my high fibre diet plan was already in place. I was wrong. And if someone cooking the way I cook is falling short, the gap for most people is probably wider than they think.

What changed my mind was a single day's eating — a good day, by any reasonable measure — and a rough fibre count that came in at 20–22g before dinner. Green tea, overnight oats with kefir and mixed seeds, a boiled egg on wholemeal bread, a small pear. That's a morning most nutritionists would approve of. It still left me 10g short by lunchtime.

What a Good Day Actually Looks Like

Here's what I ate that day, with approximate fibre figures:

• Overnight oats (40g) with chia, flax and black poppy seeds — ~5.5g
• Kefir and almond milk — negligible
• Boiled egg on wholemeal baguette with Flora — ~2g
• Slice of tomato — ~0.5g
• Small pear — ~3.5g

Running total by mid-morning: ~11.5g

• Red lentil dhal with pearl barley (lunch) — ~12g
• Small wholemeal baguette with feta and tomato — ~5g
• Apple — ~4g

Day total: ~32.5g — over the line, but only because of the dhal and barley. Without them: 20–22g. A good day, and still nearly short.

The High Fibre Meal Ideas That Actually Move the Needle

This is a gut health diet plan built on real food, not supplements. These are the moves that make the biggest difference:

1. Keep the skin on
Apple, pear, cucumber, potato — the skin is where a significant portion of the fibre lives. Peeling is optional. Peeling and then worrying about your fibre intake is not a strategy.

2. Upgrade your grains
Wholemeal over white, every time. Brown rice over white. Pearl barley over either — it adds beta-glucan fibre on top of standard dietary fibre, and it turns a red lentil dhal into something that closes the gap almost on its own. My buckwheat sourdough comes from the village panadería — baked to order, three working days. When I've been away in Florie and the order isn't timed right, I switch to integral (wholemeal) while I wait. It used to be a kitchen project; now it's a standing order.

3. Add seeds invisibly
A tablespoon of mixed seeds — chia, flax, black poppy — stirred into overnight oats or scattered over soup adds ~3g of fibre without changing the flavour. I keep a jar of mixed seeds on the worktop at Casa Adora and use them daily.

4. Make legumes a meal, not a side
This is the single most efficient lever. One portion of Andy's Red Lentil Dhal adds ~8g of fibre. A tin of chickpeas tossed into a soup adds another 6–7g. The black beans that arrived at Casa Adora today — Eat Wholesome Organic, a case of twelve — will do the same. Legumes are the difference between 18g and 30g for most people.

5. Drink more water
Increasing fibre intake without increasing water intake is a mistake your digestion will make clear. I drink 2 litres or more daily — green tea, water with Waterdrop tabs, and a glass of water with freshly squeezed lemon most mornings. A habit worth building — the lemon adds a small prebiotic benefit and makes the first glass of the day considerably more appealing. Stay ahead of it.

What I'm Changing at Casa Adora

Not a dramatic overhaul. The Mediterranean diet I cook from is already well-placed — olive oil, pulses, wholegrains, fermented foods. The gap is smaller here than it would be in a kitchen built on processed food. But smaller isn't zero.

The specific changes:

• Legumes in more meals — the black beans go into soups and stews from this week; the dhal becomes a regular rather than an occasional dish
• Pearl barley as a default grain — into soups, into the dhal, alongside fish instead of white rice
• Seeds in the overnight oats every morning — already doing this, making it non-negotiable
• Skins on everything — already mostly doing this; making it conscious rather than casual
• A second piece of fruit daily — the pear at lunch, the apple after dinner; both count

The Overnight Buckwheat Jar is already part of the rotation. So is Homemade Kefir, Sauerkraut Scrambled Eggs on Sourdough, and Andy's Red Lentil Dhal. The Resistant Starch Recipes hub covers the cook-it-cool-it angle. The Gut Health Recipes hub is where everything lives together.

30g is achievable. It just needs to be deliberate. That's what a real high fibre diet plan looks like — not a supplement stack or a dramatic overhaul, but a series of small, permanent upgrades to food you're already cooking.

This high fibre diet plan is featured in my Gut Health Recipes hub — real food from a rural Andalucían kitchen, built around fermented foods, high-fibre pulses, wholegrains and prebiotic-rich ingredients.
Find more recipes and food adventures here.
Wonky photos, proper food, genuine adventures — The Flexible Chef