3 Foods to Avoid While Constipated

Most people have a bowel movement every day or every other day, depending on their diet and lifestyle. Constipation is having trouble emptying your bowels for more than 3 or 4 days, or having extremely hard stools that are painful when you try to pass them out of your body. You should eat foods that soften stools to relieve constipation. Eating foods that harden them will worsen the condition.

Heavy foods like red meat, fried foods like battered fish and chips, baked goods like cakes, pies, and bread often take a long time to digest. Food must pass through the stomach, large intestine, small intestine, colon, and then the intestines before the waste products leave the body as waste. Along the way different nutrients and water are extracted and delivered to the part of the body that requires it. The longer the process takes, the more water is removed, the drier or harder the stool becomes. Also, if the food is relatively dry at first or if inadequate fluid is consumed (excluding caffeine products and alcohol which can dehydrate), the end product (faeces) will later be dry or hard. [“Water is the best drink for a wise man.” said the French philosopher Henry David Thoreau.]

Red meat comes from large, strong animals, so their meat is tougher compared to the animals that white meat comes from. Therefore, its meat takes longer to break down in our body because the muscles are stronger. White meat is easier to digest because fish and poultry have smaller muscles compared to cattle and pigs.

Fried food is generally oily. Oil makes food tastier and smoother in most cases, but it’s something the body doesn’t really need. The body must work harder to extract oil and fats from food so that they can be expelled. If the body’s digestive system is busy trying to neutralize other toxins that have entered the system, fat will be placed in “storage areas” around the body until it has resources to process it. When these “warehouses” are too full, we feel bloated and uncomfortable.

Products that contain a lot of wheat flour and oil that have little nutritional value. Flour is basically a vehicle for other foods. For example, the pastry shell of a pie is an edible “pouch” or packaging for the meat, vegetables or fruit it contains, the bread is what holds a sandwich together. The crust or bread simply makes the filling more palatable and easier to digest. But most breads and cakes are just flour, oil, and air that contain no nutrients. Consuming more dough instead of the filling will only clog your digestive system, especially if you are constipated.

As my title promised, I need to name the top 3 foods to avoid that someone with constipation should avoid. To narrow down the candidates, we need to consider foods that fall into two or all of the above three categories and then choose the ones that are most commonly consumed. The quotes are:

• Meat pies and sausage rolls contain red meat and flour.
• Fish and chips are fried and the batter contains flour.
• Grilled or broiled steak: Meat that is cooked relatively quickly does not break down fatty tissue and muscle, as well as meat cooked over low heat, so when it enters the stomach, digestive juices must further break it down.
• French fries or chips are fried and very dry. Your body must use more water to digest this, so your stool will become harder if you’re already constipated.
• Hard cheeses as they have most of their moisture content pressed in their production process. They also contain fat and protein from a large animal.
• Fried meat like schnitzel, sweet and sour pork, fried chicken.
• Bacon and eggs or sausage and eggs.
• Salami and other processed meats.

My choice for the top three are meat pies, battered fish and chips, and French fries. What are yours?