This Magic Ingredient Helped Me Poop After A Lifetime Of Ghastly Constipation
by Audie Metcalf
Here we are. You, out in the world somewhere, and me, in my house in Burbank, about to tell you all about my poop habits.
It’s one thing to write an article about pooping and digestion and the actually shocking benefits of fiber, and it’s quite another to be like, “hi, my name is Audie, here’s a story about my constipation.”
And yet here it is.
I’ve never been a great pooper.
If I had to write a list of things I’m great at or even good at, pooping would not be on it.
I’ve always been supremely mindful about what I eat. Fruits and vegetables make their way to almost every meal I prepare, leafy greens are my ride-or-die, I take a multivitamin and a probiotic every day, and can be overtly annoying about how learning to cook is essential for eating healthy foods so you don’t die.
And yet, in all these conversations and meals and know-it-all tirades, digestion was a mere afterthought.
So technically, even though I have written the word poop no fewer than 5 times, this is really an article about fiber. And more to the point, it is an article about how fiber is actually magic.
Let’s set the scene.
After a lifetime of a not terrific pooping schedule, I found a specific brand of coffee to keep things mildly functioning. But during the pandemic, its supply chain had issues. I panicked. And things got…dark for a while. Things got...difficult. Bad things happened that I’m not fully prepared to discuss publicly on the internet but the word “impacted” was said by far too many doctors on far too many frantic telemedicine calls.
These doctors suggested all the horrific things I thought they might suggest.
Metamucil. Milk of magnesia. Stool softeners.
Once I plucked myself off the floor after a 40 minute crying jag that included sobbing such things as “I’m so very old,” I had a small realization.
No one said anything about food.
No one.
So I lined my bathroom shelves with pills and milks and beige-colored plastic bottles featuring wheat-stalks. And then I pulled a woolen blanket over my legs and snuggled into my shawl and complained about my sore hip.
But after diligently ingesting horse pills and mixing various dusts into water and pretending it tasted “lemony!” I noticed exactly zero results. So, naturally, I breathlessly googled “proctologists near me without COVID” with the hope that they could recommend some magic pill, so that, fingers crossed, I wouldn’t have to go to a hospital to get a tube shoved up my ass during a pandemic.
And much to my amazement they told me there is such a pill.
It’s called a raspberry.
Did you guys know this? I didn’t know this.
Mostly because the concept of fiber just isn’t on my list of things I think about.
With all my zoodles and sweet potato toast and cauli-fucking-everything, I forgot to make sure that my body was actually, you know, functioning.
And on top of telling me to gobble raspberries like it was my job (8 grams of fiber per cup!), and to be sure to eat 25 grams of fiber each day without fail, the proctologist (god that word) told me to halve my body weight and make that my daily ounces of water I drink. And that water, he told me, is the antidote to colorectal issues later in life. I promptly researched water bottles and bought THIS one which has been witchcraft-level helpful in terms of upping my water consumption, and in fact I can literally feel the water sloshing around in my stomach as I type this series of truly grotesque words to you now.
And, yes. I could even up the ante to a morning passionfruit, which clocks in at around 24 grams of fiber per cup, but it’s baby steps forward for me. Also passionfruit tastes like hot, rotting garbage. Sorry, Great British Bake Off, and every other chef who makes passionfruit curd and pretends it’s good. It’s not.
Now that I’m three weeks into my berry journey, and pooping better than ever, I’ve also stumbled onto something of a pro-tip: berries are just not delicious when speared onto forks or corralled into spoons.
They just taste weird that way.
They are best enjoyed straight from the container, by the handful, standing at the open fridge, knowing that with each, successive bite, you are that much closer to the greatest poop of your natural life.
Audie Metcalf is the Editor-in-chief of The Candidly, and lives in LA with her family. You can find more of her articles here.
