Failure - Poop & Carbs page

[WendyLady]

So I've been working on being primal for a few months. Over time I have more & more constipated, to the point of agony. My weight has been frozen, naturally, because I'm full of it. Literally.

For the past three days I decided I could not think about carbs, I had to eat nothing but veg until my gut sorted out. I know from past experience that I do well on mostly veg.

I have eaten almost nothing but raw veg for the past 3 days and finally today I'm having some forward progress. It is so painful that I had to call in sick to work. But things are finally moving. I'm having cramps that are more painful than childbirth labor pains were. It's pretty intense around here today. (I haven't had a bowel movement that was more than the volume of a golfball in more than two weeks now. The irony with my last statement is that I have been looking more & more pregnant the past weeks. So in a way...)

I've been eating around 180g of carbs per day, all from veg. But even before things started moving I felt satiated and my weight loss picked back up. It isn't just from having less food weight in my gut - my pants are looser in the backside all of a sudden.

Paleo has taught me a lot - I will never use vegetable oils again. I've given up my gluten-free treats that were really just processed junk. I think about how close my food is "to the dirt". How close is this food to its natural state?

But I have also learned that not every human being can be lumped together & told, "you should eat less than this many carbs & have lots of fat". I have obviously not been thriving on it.

My plan is to loosely mesh together Eat to Live with Primal - I know, it sounds impossible, right?? But with the idea that I will eat almost all veg, but some lean protein as I feel the need or want it.

I wish all of you the best, and if you are thriving on Primal, that is GREAT and I hope you have further success. But if you aren't - don't be afraid to think outside the box. Pure logic says that no one source has all the answers. Find your OWN best health, regardless of the "label".

If you ask me what my way of eating is... I'll say "it's my very own". I'm trying to take the best of what many great thinkers have come up with & do what is best for me, not what works for anyone else.

[Ayla2010]

Well the primal blueprint is not specifically low carb, some of us do better this way, but some don't.
What exactly were you eating before?
Do you think the meat was doing it? How much were you eating?
You can eat nice fatty cuts of meat and plenty of veg, and still be not that high in carbs.

[j3nn]

180g of all veggies, no fruit? O_O Or do you count potatoes and such toward vegetables? Or do you not discount the fiber? Just curious! That just sounds like so much to chew, lol. I think it's liberating to march to the beat of your own drum. Good luck finding your rhythm!

[CiKi90]

That's amazing, some people never find the right combination of foods or cut out the correct things to find what works best for them. They just blindly follow a set plan and hope it works. Your courage to tweak the diet for what works best for you is commendable, and I hope that one day I can find the perfect solution for my very unique and personal body composition.

Also, if you are still having "trouble," might I suggest taking a fiber supplement, a spoonful of coconut oil, or maybe even a few days of Miralax? Miralax works wonders for me, is non addictive, meaning you won't have to use it forever/keep using more and more for it to work, and there is no painful cramping in the way that ex-lax does.

[Ayla2010]

The PB book does say to eat plenty of leafy veg anyway.

[Knifegill]

How much magnesium were you taking?

[YogaBare]

To be fair, a lot of people (myself included) have this problem on HFLC. I reintroduced potatoes and yogurt - problem resolved!

It sounds to me like you're eating too much veg though - all that fibre can be very harsh on the system. Raw veg makes things a lot worse for me.

[Betorq]

Drink lots of room temp, or warm to mildly hot water daily, with or without a tiny pinch of sea salt. On an empty stomach each morning, after a hot shower or bath & drinking some warm/hot water, do tummy self-massages while laying on your back, knees up, feet flat. Use both hands, finger tips massaging, loosening and finding/releasing tight, hard or painful areas of the colon. Go in the natural direction of the colon.

Also, probiotics for daily use, some with every meal or most meals: either in natural form, ie fermented foods you either make yourself or buy from others who make it themselves (best) , or purchased from the Whole Foods or other health food store, in powder form (next best) or capsule form (least best, ie weakest). I drink a glass of kimchi juice or sauerkraut juice & that always clears my colon in a hurry, in the morning. Others report that it does bring on the "whoosh" for them too.

Chew your food slowly and thoroughly. Don't eat after a certain hour @ night that you feel is prudent.

Don't eat in a upset or tired state of body or mind. Don't overeat.

Take walks after you eat moderately sized meals.

Consider trying organic chia seeds soaked overnight in good spring or filtered water. Fiber is not ALL evil. Seeds that are hydrophilic and mucilagenous can help you poop, no doubt about that.

Bounce on mini-trampoline or big old fashioned one, daily or even twice a day.

Hang upside down (inversion).

Do exercise that you actually look forward to & enjoy so it's not work or suffering to engage in it regularly & long term.

Have sex/make love more often and for longer, with the person or people you love or are attracted to.

Dance. Sing. Cry. Laugh.

[Drumroll]

Time for some fermented veggies in there! Like, serious doses and drink the juice too!

Also, and this is just my n=1, but I find that caffeine can help sort things out if I'm really constipated for whatever reason. Caffeine binds to bile and fats to increase bulk a bit, with obvious results.

[LauraSB]

I found that if I stay below 100g of carbs for an extended period of time, I get pretty backed up, even with daily kombucha and fermented pickles. After swinging up as high as 175g, I have settled into about 125g on average. I don't worry so much about carbs, per se, as just eating real foods and avoiding seed oils, legumes and grains.

12oz of potato (sweet or white) 4 days in a row seems to work better for me than any other laxative strategy I've tried. I just can't eat that much potato for days on end, because the noise and rumbling in my stomach and intestines gets really annoying.

I completely agree that you need to choose a way of eating that works for you, rather than trying to force yourself into someone else's mold. There are a number of different "diets" that are good jumping off points.