Do you know how to “read” your poop? I’ve taught this very effective method of self-monitoring in my book How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy! (but kids seem to be much more willing to do it than their parents).
The physical characteristics of an optimal poop are easy to spot. It should be light brown in color, easy to pass, earthy smelling and not off-putting, well-formed and floating.
The average person should move about a foot (30 cm.) of poop from their body a day on average and you should feel a sense of completion when finished. If you don’t feel that, even after moving 20 inches or more, you are technically constipated.
Today, my aim is to show you how monitoring your poop can go a long way toward helping you fine-tune your diet.
Sinkers: Indicators of Dietary Imbalance
The most common indicator of dietary imbalance is sinking poop. Here’s four common reasons why this happens:
1. You are not eating enough fiber! You need a mix of soluble and insoluble fiber in your diet to have a healthy colon and poop that floats. Eating more vegetables and fruit is the easiest way to add fiber to your diet.
I’ve seen countless cases where my clients were eating the right amount of vegetables based on their Primal Pattern® Type. After further analysis, much of the vegetable matter they were eating was of low quality (not organic) and over-cooked.
Even worse, they were achieving the right balance of carbs to flesh foods on paper, but their elevated carb volumes were coming from things that really shouldn’t be considered “food” (desserts and sodas) if one is truly interested in being healthy, not just impressing their diet coach.
If you’re eating enough vegetables and fruits, increasing the amount of raw food in those categories goes a long way toward better pooping. At least half your vegetable and fruit intake should be raw, and many experience improvements by doing nothing more than that.
2. You are eating too much meat! The low quality of the meat you do eat can make your poops smell AWFUL!
If you don’t think that’s the case, ask whomever you share a bathroom with if your poop stinks… Because people tend to love their own ugly, stinky poop like mother ducks love their ugly ducklings!
3. You aren’t eating enough good fats! If your fat consumption includes hydrogenated fats such as so-called “healthy foods” drowned in poisonous canola oil, your poop may not float.
Eating a variety of high quality, organic, free-range meats and fish caught in the wild is the only way to get good fats from flesh foods today. The same goes for eggs!
Plus, how you cook meats and eggs — using organic oils such as coconut oil, ghee, or (raw) butter at the right temperature range — goes a long way toward producing better poop, better skin, better brain and nervous functioning and better energy levels!
4. You aren’t drinking enough water! When your body is low on water, the first place it goes to scavenge more water is the colon.
Should you need extra motivation to drink more water, consider this: When you’re dehydrated, your body draws water from your poop, tries its best to clean it, then puts it back into circulation.
If this sounds “crappy” to you, imagine how the cells of your body feel…
Thirsty yet?
How Much More Does Your Poop Tell Me About You?
In closing, it’s important for you to know your dietary habits aren’t the only things your poop tells me about your physical health. Fact is, it provides lots of clues about many health conditions and potential problems. For example:
- The balance of your autonomic nervous system.
- The functional capacity of your liver and gallbladder.
- The functioning of your digestive (stomach, small intestine) and eliminative systems (colon).
- The state of your mental health.
- The possibility that medical drugs may be disabling your digestive and/or eliminative systems.
- Using supplements, powders and potions that aren’t compatible with your body.
- How your body responds to exercise, or the lack of same.
- The likelihood of other health challenges, like parasites or a fungal infection.
I hope this article helps you fine-tune, so you can enjoy a healthy, resilient, well-energized body and mind.
Love and chi,
Paul
