How often do you poop?
WholeFoods4Lyfe
Posts: 1,518 Member
TMI question I realize.
I have a Hx of IBS so I have a tracker on my phone to track my BMs. Since switching to LCHF, I only go every 3rd day typically, and then I'll go like 3-4 times that day, and then won't go again for 2-3 days.
I'm not worried or anything, this just seems to me MY new normal. I'm just wondering if this is typical for this WOE or if I'm just a special snowflake
I have a Hx of IBS so I have a tracker on my phone to track my BMs. Since switching to LCHF, I only go every 3rd day typically, and then I'll go like 3-4 times that day, and then won't go again for 2-3 days.
I'm not worried or anything, this just seems to me MY new normal. I'm just wondering if this is typical for this WOE or if I'm just a special snowflake
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I didn't go at all for NINE days (everyone told me to take Miralax but I didn't feel bloated or bad so I kept feeding my body good food and let it work itself out) and then three days in a row (and twice in one day). I'm very irregular but unless I feel bad, I let my body do what it wants0
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I go about every other day. Depends on what I eat....0
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My husband poops all the time. He also always has very stinky gas. Sometimes we can't even make it home from a restaurant without him writhing in pain because he has to poop so bad. That just sounds horrible to me, I'd rather only go every few days. I have no discomfort, no gas to speak of. Of course, his way is normal to him so nothing I tell him will sway him to change his WOE.0
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Now that I think about it, I'm not very gassy anymore either...now my husband like you mentioned is awful!1
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With magnesium? Every morning. 0
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I take mag twice a day as recommended by my doc and I go at least once a day if not twice. It's not a lot and I am not nearly as uncomfortable as I used to be now that I think of it.0
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"Normal" is one BM per meal, roughly 24 hours after, so typically, three times a day. Read this book:
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, by Mary Roach
http://www.maryroach.net/gulp.html
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1-2X/day typically. I also supplement with magnesium citrate so I think that's definitely part of it.0
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dont take any supplements and atleast once a day0
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Every one or two days, sometimes skips a day, sometimes twice in a day. I don't really keep track anymore. Before LCHF 3x a day.0
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When I started keto 6 months ago - I had a very predictable normal 2 per day - first thing in the morning and 11am. Then I started getting hit with intermittent constipation [never had that problem before]. In the last 2 months, I'm down to once a day 48% of the time [twice a day the other 48% and zero sometimes], and the time of day is more random. I'm not happy with the change and take magnesium citrate, lost of psylium and salt to help. On the good side - no gas, and nasty stuff any more.1
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With 400 mg magnesium citrate at night, and Bididobacterium infantis probiotic twice a day: every morning. This is a huge improvement. I had an issue long before I started keto, and, honestly, it's impossible to tell if keto made it worse.0
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michelle172415 wrote: »TMI question I realize.
I have a Hx of IBS so I have a tracker on my phone to track my BMs. Since switching to LCHF, I only go every 3rd day typically, and then I'll go like 3-4 times that day, and then won't go again for 2-3 days.
I'm not worried or anything, this just seems to me MY new normal. I'm just wondering if this is typical for this WOE or if I'm just a special snowflake
@michelle172415 after 40 years of serious IBS how often was all over the board for the first 90 days and it was 180 days after starting LCHF before it was more or less daily.
Now 1.5 years out it is typically one or twice daily but nearly every time when my weight ticks up a few pounds for a few days going regularly there is a build up that works it way out in a big way from time to time.
The IBS has been gone for a year now but movements still have a mind of their own but unlike for 40 years my brain can tell them not now and they will not ask again for some time.0 -
When I started keto 6 months ago - I had a very predictable normal 2 per day - first thing in the morning and 11am. Then I started getting hit with intermittent constipation [never had that problem before]. In the last 2 months, I'm down to once a day 48% of the time [twice a day the other 48% and zero sometimes], and the time of day is more random. I'm not happy with the change and take magnesium citrate, lost of psylium and salt to help. On the good side - no gas, and nasty stuff any more.
@Bob314159 Can I ask what your carb limit is, and how much psyllium a day do you take? I take psyllium too and it packs a massive carb punch
OP with the help of magnesium, probiotics and lately psyllium husk powder, I go every day. I need to ensure this, as if i miss more than 2 days I experience terrible pain and vomiting, so adding more carbs (fibre) to combat this, is worth it to me.1 -
I poop whenever I need to. I don't really keep track or count. It's not super frequent. But, it's not multiple days apart either.0
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I aim for 30 carbs - often get to 50. It's hard to get fiber without carbs- an annoying balancing act. I almost never log psyllium - I'm hoping its net carbs are zero. Since I'm not sure - I hesitate to take too much. Take 2 to 4 heaping tablespoons a day. I was taking psyllium for years before going keto.Christine_72 wrote: »@Bob314159 Can I ask what your carb limit is, and how much psyllium a day do you take? I take psyllium too and it packs a massive carb punch
OP with the help of magnesium, probiotics and lately psyllium husk powder, I go every day. I need to ensure this, as if i miss more than 2 days I experience terrible pain and vomiting, so adding more carbs (fibre) to combat this, is worth it to me.
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I aim for 30 carbs - often get to 50. It's hard to get fiber without carbs- an annoying balancing act. I almost never log psyllium - I'm hoping its net carbs are zero. Since I'm not sure - I hesitate to take too much. Take 2 to 4 heaping tablespoons a day. I was taking psyllium for years before going keto.Christine_72 wrote: »@Bob314159 Can I ask what your carb limit is, and how much psyllium a day do you take? I take psyllium too and it packs a massive carb punch
OP with the help of magnesium, probiotics and lately psyllium husk powder, I go every day. I need to ensure this, as if i miss more than 2 days I experience terrible pain and vomiting, so adding more carbs (fibre) to combat this, is worth it to me.
Yep it does has have zero net carbs. 20g has 18g carbs and 18g Fibre. Do we digest all of those calories and carbs, i wonder??0 -
It used to be pretty consistently once a day. Then a couple years ago I started an MS med that messed with my GI system and I started going a few times a day. Now it seems like I'm back to once a day for the most part (after starting LCHF).0
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On Metformin:
With Imodium - nothing special.
Straight - 1x daily (23 hours, uninterrupted). Priceless!0 -
You're supposed to poop 1-2 times a day. If not, its not good for your digestive system/health.
If you want to hear the scoop on the poop, listen to the 18 minute presentation, Milissa Ramos, the "Poop Whisperer" on TedMed Talks:
The answer to your health is in your poop | Melissa Ramos | TEDxDistilleryDistrictWomen
She is so funny, but yet super informative. She has diagrams, of several types of poops, like "pencil thin" poop, "rabbit" poop, "loose" poop, "healthy" poop, color, sinkers vs. floaters, etc. She talks about probiotics, low fat diets=bad, stress, magnesium, sugar, etc. and how it results in constipation/diarrhea, squatty potty, etc.
I hope this helps,
Dan the Man from Michigan
Keto / The Recipe Water Fasting / E.A.S.Y. Exercise Program
P.S. If your not pooping everyday, you should look into homemade fermented foods like pickles, sauerkraut, and many others. Go to youtube and look for; "How to make fermented".
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Come on guys get off the poop fixation. There is NOT a number/frequency that fits everyone.1
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GaleHawkins wrote: »Come on guys get off the poop fixation. There is NOT a number/frequency that fits everyone.
Number 2 is widely recognized in some modern cultures.1 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »Come on guys get off the poop fixation. There is NOT a number/frequency that fits everyone.
Number 2 is widely recognized in some modern cultures.
Yes I understand that from childhood. It just is not the same for everyone every day.
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It honestly didn't occur to me that not going for a few days at a time could be detrimental. I suffer no pain, no constipation, no gas. When I do go it lends itself to the softer side, but nothing concerning.
Now, after having my gallbladder out last fall, my first BM took 5 days and was BAD! I was severely constipated and in a lot of pain, that is not the case now, I just don't go often. I last went Sunday morning, had a tiny bit of a BM this morning, I anticipate that I'll have some more later today, but I'm not going to stress if I don't. It will come out when it's ready to come out. Now, if I do start experiencing any negative side effects, I will definitely consider some sort of supplementation, but I just don't think that it is necessary right now.0 -
I'm another who will go several days in between, but with no bloating... I don't sweat it! My husband has been eating LCHF probably 75% of the time, and his production of gas is way down (hallelujah!
He notices the difference too, lol!! I don't keep up with his bowel movements, but I feel he would complain if he didn't have his daily meeting on his "porcelain throne" lol! 0 -
I don't know quite how to word this... But my husband can tell/feel when I haven't gone that day (when we're being intimate, and I'm not talking back door shenanigans, to be clear. Just normal).
This alone makes me even more vigilant about going every day, just to save that little bit of embarrassment.0 -
michelle172415 wrote: »It honestly didn't occur to me that not going for a few days at a time could be detrimental. I suffer no pain, no constipation, no gas. When I do go it lends itself to the softer side, but nothing concerning.
Now, after having my gallbladder out last fall, my first BM took 5 days and was BAD! I was severely constipated and in a lot of pain, that is not the case now, I just don't go often. I last went Sunday morning, had a tiny bit of a BM this morning, I anticipate that I'll have some more later today, but I'm not going to stress if I don't. It will come out when it's ready to come out. Now, if I do start experiencing any negative side effects, I will definitely consider some sort of supplementation, but I just don't think that it is necessary right now.
It's my understanding that the effects are not actually known (nor is the healthy frequency, arguably). There are some connections with colon cancer and various other health issues, but it's all correlation and based on SAD and a grain-heavy diet, which has a lot of undigestible and gut-irritating material in it. All bets are off when you no longer have all the undigestible and gut-irritating stuff going through your system, and the stuff in your system is more thoroughly absorbed.
The assumption is that if you're not going, your system is building up with fecal matter and becoming bulky and hard and requires straining to pass. However, that's not always the case. Breastfed infants, for example, may only go once every couple of days or even only once a week! It's not because they're constipated, or even because they're "special," but because breastmilk is highly absorbed. There's very little waste to begin with.
So, basically, there are two different scenarios going on here:
1. You're eating a diet with a lot of unabsorbable waste, in which case, it's best to go at least once, if not twice, a day. Not doing so increases risk of impacting the stools and causing constipation and colorectal damage. (I don't entirely agree with his conclusions as blanket recommendations, for the reasons I explain above and below, but Konstantin Monastyrsky has a ton of resources and goes into all the nitty-gritty details of bowel movements, frequency, and constipation, as well as why a ton of fiber is actually counterproductive -- https://www.gutsense.org/constipation/frequency.html )
2. You're eating a diet with very little unabsorbable waste, in which case, there's not much to move. Going once or more per day may be unfeasible simply due to lack of waste. This is a beautiful explanation by an A&P student:I'll try my best to explain this, as I just finished my A&P courses in college. If my information is off or entirely incorrect, I will not be ashamed as this is mostly from memory.
Carb diets are two things that are related to one another: less filling and faster moving. Your stomach is better at churning and propulsion of carbohydrates than it is protein and fat. This is why diets high in protein leave you fuller, longer. Same with fats. Your pancreas and liver, detecting the presence of high protein and fat concentrations must produce a higher level of proteases and lipases (enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of proteins and fats) so they can be taken up. However, carbohydrates are mostly broken down by the normal flora (bacteria) of your small intestine. There are enzymes that break down carbs, but I believe bacteria play a much much larger role in this.
So, your body is great at moving carbs along. Since they are less filling and faster moving, we eat a lot more. This, long story short, means more feces. The liver also produces much more bile in the presence of a high quantity of food. Bile is a significant portion of poop. So food intake is a big portion of fecal volume.
That being said, we generally eat less volume on a keto diet. It's a larger portion of slow moving, oily fats that take a long time to exit the stomach, and a long time to be broken down by lipases. The lower volume of food decreases the speed of propulsion and power of churning, increasing the amount of overall absorption of what you ate. This essentially means less poop / pooping less often.
The general suggestion is to increase vegetable intake, high in cellulose, which cannot be broken down by human enzymes. So it mixes with bile, and creates more poop.
Your intestines are super long and have a crazy amount of surface area. If you aren't pooping, blame it on the super efficient teamwork of the high fat diet and the work of your intestines. If you're not pooping as often as you think you should, eat more broccoli and such. If you are pooping once every few days, that's okay. But if you go two weeks without pooping, I'd try a natural laxative like coconut oil.
It's also important to note that a lot of our metabolic waste (us, being on a ketogenic diet) are the precious ketone bodies excreted in our urine. Instead of out body using sugars for energy, it's using lipids. So in effect, instead of pooping out what we eat, it is exiting with our urine. This is why you have to drink a lot of water. It may also help if you have hard poops on this diet. More water = less water reabsorption in your large intestine = softer, more pleasant poops.
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I just want to clarify a couple of things (just finished up a few chapters on carb digestion/metabolism in an advanced nutrition course).
In humans, carbs are digested by enzymes, not so much gut bacteria (except for fiber in the large intestine). Amylase and a couple others break down starches into component mono- or di-saccharides, depending on the makeup, and then you've got your fructase, lactase, and probably a couple others to convert the sugars to glucose, which is the only mono-saccharide that we use for energy. Large-scale digestion of carbohydrates is mostly only seen in ruminant animals (cows, goats, deer, etc), although hindgut fermenters (horses, elephants, rabbits) also get a lot of energy from bacterial fermentation, despite technically being monogastric animals.
Bile is usually only produced when there's fat in the diet, as the component bile salts are used to emulsify the fatty acids so they can be transported through a pretty much water-based system, rather than just in the presence of food.
Carbs definitely do move through our systems faster, but we are also less efficient at digesting them in general, which is a big part of why they contribute to a large fecal mass when you're eating a diet full of carbs. Fats and animal proteins usually have a digestibility rate of around 97%, while most carbs fall somewhere around 60-70%.0 -
Christine_72 wrote: »I don't know quite how to word this... But my husband can tell/feel when I haven't gone that day (when we're being intimate, and I'm not talking back door shenanigans, to be clear. Just normal).
This alone makes me even more vigilant about going every day, just to save that little bit of embarrassment.
I'm sure your husband communicates his insights with the most romantic of intentions, but some of us are not necessarily high performers on the tactfulness scale.
Perhaps you might offer some gentle suggestions, such as using a foreign language or rhymes.......0 -
lol He doesn't tell me while we're in the act.. He brought it up once a couple years after we started dating, and it has stuck in my mind ever since.0
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