“I poop once a day, right after my morning cup of coffee.”

I’ve heard this so many times when I start talking about digestion with my clients. They feel confident with their digestion because they are pooping once a day, and they give it very little thought beyond that.

There are two things about this that aren’t ideal…

• 1) They are unintentionally using a stimulant to help them poop. When we use a stimulant like caffeine to get our bowels moving, our digestive muscles start to atrophy because they aren’t having to work. They become out of shape and slow digestion down throughout the rest of the day.
• 2) They are only pooping once a day. A healthy digestive system typically looks more like 2-3 poops a day. It sounds scary to those of you pooping once a day or less, but it’s the cold hard truth.

If you are relying on coffee to help you with your once a day bowel movements, your body is sending you a signal that it needs a little help in the poop department.

Our bowel movements (BMs) are a signal from our body about how healthy it is. It is so important that we learn what those signals are telling us and how to use them to make healthy changes.

There are three indicators that signal to us that something in our body (often the gut) is off..

1. Having to use a stimulant to have a bowel movement.
2. Consistently feeling bloated after healthy meals (I’m looking at you lunchtime salad!).
3. Having bowel movements 1x a day or less.

If one or all of these is you, take it as a little nudge from your body that it could use some love.

One thing you can start doing right away to support digestion is….

Chewing!

I’ve mentioned it many times before but chewing does a lot to support healthy digestion. The longer we chew our food, the more digestive enzymes it gets from our mouth. Digestive enzymes help the digestive process, pushing things down and out faster.

Additionally, liquified food is just easier for our body to digest, for obvious reasons. Liquid travels faster than chunks. And, if we take longer to eat our food, our brain has time to receive the signal that it is full, meaning we will eat less. Digestion becomes even a notch easier because we are eating sensible meal sizes, not overloading our digestive tract and stomach with too much food to digest at once.

Try chewing each bite of food 30x or more, or at least until fully liquified.

XO,

Kelsey Cohrt