I have been staring at the same shelf of probiotic bottles in my pantry for the better part of a decade. Thirty billion CFUs in the blue bottle. Fifty billion in the white one. A refrigerated capsule that cost me seventy dollars and promised to repopulate my gut with strains I could barely pronounce. And for most of those years, I swallowed them faithfully, trusting that I was doing something profoundly good for my body. Then my nutritionist drew me a diagram on the back of a napkin that made every one of those bottles feel like a detour. She…
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I thought I had my nutrition dialed in. After two decades of competitive athletics, coaching, and writing about wellness, I could recite my macros in my sleep. Protein? Covered. Carbs? Timed to perfection around training. Fats? Avocado, olive oil, almonds — all the right sources. But there was one number on my daily tracker that I kept glossing over, week after week, the same way you skip a stretch you know you should do. Fiber. And it turns out, that single oversight was quietly shaping how my body processed everything else I was putting into it. It wasn’t until a…