How to avoid sloppy poops, hard poops, and excess gas while holidaying away from home
How to avoid sloppy poops, hard poops, and excess gas on holiday
There’s nothing worse than being on holiday and suffering from uncomfortable gut symptoms like bloating, tummy pain, loose/sloppy poops, or hard poops. Especially if you’re camping and haven’t got a great toilet setup… eeek… I remember when I first started seeing my partner we went on a camping trip in the back of his ute. It was at that stage before we felt comfortable passing wind in front of each other, and we also didn’t have access to a great toilet so I was holding in my poops and wind a lot. I remember feeling SO uncomfortable in my gut when I went to bed each night and it was horrible!
Thankfully there are a few easy things you can do to help keep your gut happy this summer. Including not holding in gas or poops!
Eat 5-6 small, regular meals across the day rather than big meals if you can. Eating regularly helps to drip feed food into your gut so that it can digest food more efficiently rather than eating large or inconsistent meals.
Chew your food well and eat slowly! Digestion starts in the mouth, so chewing your food well and eating slowly helps to kick of digestion. Practice the 20/20 rule: chew each mouthful of food 20 times and take 20 minutes to finish your meal.
Include high fibre foods everyday such as grainy crackers and bread with greater than 6g fibre per 100g, fruit(such as berries, pears, oranges, avocado), vegetables (such as broccoli, carrots and sweetcorn, peas), kidney or black beans and chickpeas, high fibre cereals or muesli such as Weetbix, All Bran, or rolled oats, nuts and seeds, and brown rice. If you’re currently not eating many of these high fibre foods, increase your intake of them slowly by adding one new high fibre food per week. This allows your gut to adjust to its new fibre load slowly.
Be mindful of spicy foods, fried and fatty foods, and alcohol as these can all cause gut upset. And if you experience loose poops, you may want to limit your intake of coffee to one per day as caffeine also causes gut upset by acting as a gut stimulant.
Eating a lot of fruit in one sitting can cause tummy troubles, so space your fruit out across the day and stick to one piece or a small handful per sitting.
Keep well hydrated! Especially if you suffer from constipation. Water helps to soften hard poops and push things along. Aim for a minimum of 1.5L per day and even more if it’s a scorcher of a day.
If you experience excess gas limit carbonated drinks e.g. fizzy drinks, energy drinks, and soda water as the gas gets trapped in your gut and contributes to bloating.
If you suffer from loose or hard poops, you could trial taking a daily fibre supplement such as Metamucil (Psyllium husk). Psyllium husk helps to thicken up loose poops, but at the same time softening hard poops. It’s an easy thing to keep in your holiday bag. You can buy this from your local supermarket or pharmacy in powder or capsule form. Start with the lowest dose once per day, and make sure you drink plenty of water with it.
Peppermint oil capsules are very good at reducing bloating and tummy pain as they act as a muscle relaxant in the gut. Trial one peppermint oil capsule 30-60min prior to meals. You can buy Mintec peppermint oil capsules from most supermarkets and they are a handy thing to keep in your toilet bag.