Updated June 01, 2014.

Increasing your fiber intake not only improves your diet and overall health -- it can also help with losing weight. Eating plenty of fiber keeps you feeling full and that sense of satiety can help prevent overeating. Here are some easy tips for increasing your fiber intake:

1. Swap corn flakes for bran flakes with raisins to get in about 25% of your dietary fiber needs for the day. Tip: Try mixing a high fiber variety with what you usually eat and slowly switch over to the high fiber variety after a couple weeks.

1. Eat whole fruits often. While fruit juice is healthy and contains plenty of vitamins, it has no fiber. Orange juice has 110 calories per eight-ounce serving; eating an orange instead will help you feel fuller sooner on fewer calories. Three pieces of fruit provide around 12 grams of fiber, so if you eat a piece of fruit after each meal you're halfway to the recommended goal of 25 grams of fiber daily.
2. Eat more beans. Try adding them to soup or sneaking them into salads. Dry beans must be soaked before preparation, so if you're pressed for time, canned varieties are fine -- just keep an eye on your sodium intake (Canned foods in general are higher in sodium than freshly-prepared foods.). There are a wide selection of canned beans available, so if you don't like the first ones you try, keep trying until you find a preferable variety.
3. Add fiber to your favorite recipes. It's best to experiment with this until you find what works for you. A few ways to do this include adding ground flax seeds to turkey meatballs for spaghetti or meatloaf or substituting whole-wheat flour in baked good recipes.

1. Choose whole-grain bread whenever possible. It provides several grams of fiber per slice. Except for a few specialty varieties that add fiber as an extra, white bread usually has no fiber at all. Try a white-wheat variety or make the swap just a few times a week to start with to help you make the transition. In time you may find you actually prefer wheat to white.
2. Switch to brown rice instead of white rice as your side dish staple. Brown rice is heartier, more flavorful and provides more fiber per serving than white rice. There are many other whole-grain foods to choose from that you may not have tried, including: quinoa, barley, hominey and buckwheat, all of which can be used as side dishes.