Welcome to Walking the Walk, a feature that takes a deeper look at commonly shared diet and fitness advice. Every other week, I'll choose one piece of advice and practice it for seven days. Then I'll report back on what I discovered about making it work in real life and how it affected my own personal fitness -- and how it ultimately can affect your own efforts.

It's weird to think that eating something that your body never actually digests can improve your health, but that's the story of fiber. Fiber is the part of a plant food that can't be absorbed by the body, so it virtually just takes a ride through your intestines.

But just by being there, fiber does your body good. It improves the health of your digestive track by moving things along. Soluble fiber, or fiber that dissolves in water, can absorb sugar before it's digested by the body, which can help prevent and control diabetes. Insoluble fiber prevents constipation and may lower the risk of colon cancer. Fiber can even help lower cholesterol levels.

In addition to all that goodness, fiber-rich foods help you stay full, a definite benefit when you're trying to lose or maintain weight. And since foods that are rich in fiber are also full of antioxidants and other healthy nutrients, you're getting a double whammy of good nutrition.

Most experts recommend that we get 25 to 35 grams of fiber a day. My challenge this week is to do just that.

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At 300 pounds, Angela Stokes had no interest in dieting. Then a friend lent her a book about a raw food diet. The next day, Angela quit eating anything animal-based, cooked, or processed and eventually, she lost 160 pounds.

What is a raw food diet? People who choose this style of eating choose whole foods in their natural form. Losing weight on a raw food diet makes sense; once you rid your diet of processed foods and depend mainly on fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds for nutrition, it's hard to overeat.

Though a raw food diet is rich in vitamins, fiber, and antioxidants, nutritionists don't agree that it's necessary for good health. Though raw foodies believe cooking destroys nutrients in food -- and their correct in that belief -- so do the acids in your stomach. But we could all do better by ourselves by including more plant foods in our diet. Angela herself says that beginners can start with eating 50% raw foods, and even if you can't get past that point, she thinks you'll still be doing well by yourself.

I could never go completely raw myself, but I am working hard at eating more fruits and vegetables every day. But I also know that fish and eggs are an important part of my diet, and eating the occasional piece of fresh baked bread just makes me happy. What about you? Could you survive on a raw diet?

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If we here at That's Fit haven't yet convinced you to eat your fruits and veggies, here's one more reason. A recent study found that people who eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables are less likely to suffer a stroke.

Researchers found that people who eat plant foods on a regular basis have higher levels of vitamin C in their bodies. They also discovered that people with higher levels of vitamin C had a lower risk of stroke. So the connection was made that eating a diet rich in plant foods protects the cardiovascular system, which lowers the risk of stroke, even though researchers couldn't say exactly what the connection is.

Interestingly, taking vitamin C supplements doesn't have a protective effect. Instead, experts recommend eating a rainbow of plant foods every day.

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