What is it about the Standard American Diet and the biggest complaints doctors get in relation to gastrointestinal issues? Constipation. And what happens if you aren’t having enough BM’s? Food that is sitting and rotting in your gut, causing intestinal issues.
I believe that your health starts in the gut. And eating enough fiber to keep things moving in your gut is one of the keys to keeping it healthy.
The larger and more frequent your BM’s are, the healthier you may be. But even though you may be having a daily BM, you can still be constipated. You just may be passing today what you ate last week! No wonder we get bloated and have unexplained weight gain!
Adding more vegetables and plant-based meals can help lessen the time it takes for your food to be digested and the eliminated. And when you add more vegetables, you add more fiber, which creates a much easier, less painful BM. Studies show that it takes around a day or two for plant-based meals to be digested and eliminated, but compared to a conventional diet, it took four days to digest and get eliminated. No wonder people complain of bloating, gas, and other intestinal problems! When you have food sitting and rotting in your gut, it can create some uncomfortable patterns. If you want to measure transit time to see how well your digestive system is working, add a beet and watch for pink stools, or eat some corn and you can watch for when it comes out because corn doesn’t digest.
Constipation can be a problem for gut health and weight loss - it is one of the most common complaints leading to millions of doctor visits per year. Not only is constipation a problem, but it can lead to other issues due to the straining as you try to pass stools, such as hiatial hernia, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, and anal fissures.
Currently the average American only eats about 15 grams of fiber, when they should be eating 25-30 grams of fiber! So people are eating less than half of the recommended daily serving of fiber than they should!
What is the key to preventing constipation? Add fiber! Fiber is only found in plant foods, so the more plants you eat, the better and easier your BM’s will be. Here are a few tips to add extra fiber to every meals:
1 tablespoon ground flax seed to your oatmeal or morning smoothie
Add 1/4 cup or more of black beans to your home-made nachos
Add a sprinkle of beans on top of your salads (chick-pea, white beans are really yummy on salads!)
Add a more high-fiber veggies to your dinner plate such as steamed broccoli, cauliflower
Add brown rice instead of noodles to your home-made chicken “noodle” soup
Swap your bread for whole grain (if you don’t have a gluten sensitivity)
Swap your white rice for brown rice
Swap your conventional pasta for brown rice pasta or chick pea pasta
Add berries to your smoothie, salad or cereal
Top your salad at the salad bar with foods like broccoli, cauliflower, and beans
Add a sprinkle of nuts: pumpkin seeds on salads, walnuts to cereals, sunflower seeds to stir-fry’s
Adding more fiber to your diet is not only going to help your digestion and hopefully eliminate constipation, but studies show that adding more fiber will help you fill fuller faster - foods full of fiber take up more space and trigger a signal to the brain that says “I’m full”!
How Not to Die, Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM
The Whole Foods Diet, John Mackey, Alona Pulde, M.D., Matthew Lederman, M.D.