Lose Weight Fast Pooping

Though you may feel lighter after a bowel movement, it doesn’t reduce body fat. To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume by exercising and eating smaller, healthy meals.

Pooping is simple: When you do it, you’re getting rid of food that was in your body. Is that why we feel lighter after doing our business? Are we actually losing weight? It turns out, yes.

Larger people who eat and drink more, or people who have less-regular bowel movements, have heavier poops. It takes an average of 33 hours for food to be processed into poop and pass out of your body.

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If we only lose a little bit of weight when we poop, why do we feel so much slimmer finally pooping after being constipated or after a large meal? It’s because pooping reduces gas and bloating. This generally helps you feel more comfortable.

The longer poop stays in the intestines, the drier and heavier it will become. While most people poop once a day, it’s considered normal to poop as frequently as three times a day or as little as once every three days.

Having very frequent, loose watery stools is considered diarrhea. Diarrhea is usually caused by bacterial infections or stress and lasts several days. It can become dangerous when it lasts for weeks or more because it encourages water loss in the body.

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People with diarrhea can lose a lot of weight if they’ve been sick for a while, but they’re losing mostly water weight.

We do lose a bit of weight when we poop, but it’s not an effective way to lose the weight that really affects our health: body fat.

Experts say fat that accumulates around the waist is the most dangerous type of body fat. This fat is called visceral fat. It’s doesn’t lie beneath the skin like most fat on the body, called subcutaneous fat.

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Visceral fat is associated with many serious health problems, from metabolic problems to increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It’s also associated with breast cancer and gallbladder disease in women.

To lose body fat, you need to focus on burning more calories than you consume. You can do this through diet and exercise — not your bowel habits.

If you’re overweight or obese and need to shed pounds, start by adding exercise to your daily routine. Try to exercise moderately for 30 minutes a day. This could include walking, swimming, biking, jogging or lifting weights.

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Getting enough exercise is also an important factor in keeping your bowel habits regular. You might see that you poop more often when you start an exercise routine.

While you might feel lighter after pooping, you’re not actually losing much weight. What’s more, when you lose weight while pooping, you’re not losing the weight that really matters.

To lose disease-causing body fat, you need to burn more calories than you consume. You can do this by exercising more and eating less.

Do You Lose Weight When You Poop?

Replacing the processed foods in your diet with high-fiber foods can help you achieve your weight loss goals and reduce your risks of obesity-related disease.

Has strict sourcing guidelines and relies on peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, and medical associations. We avoid using tertiary references. You can learn more about how we ensure our content is accurate and current by reading our editorial policy.OK, we know you’ve wondered if pooping can actually shed pounds—it’s a fair thought, since you do often feel less bloated and lighter letting it out. Yet, can you actually lose weight? As in drop a few pounds from one poop? We’d like to hope so,

We were curious, too, so we asked experts if pooping can lead to weight loss. Here’s what they have to say about it.

Does Pooping Help You Lose Weight?

You can lose weight from pooping, but it’s very, very slight. “Most stool weighs about 100 grams or 0.25 pounds. This can vary based on a person’s size and bathroom frequency. That said, poop is made up of about 75% water, so going to the bathroom gives off a little bit of water weight, ” says Natalie Rizzo, MS, RD. But it’s not like you’re going to fit in clothes the next size down.

If you were to weigh yourself before and after pooping, the weight change on the scale would reflect the weight of the stool, which also contains protein, undigested fat, bacteria, and undigested food residues.

Of course (and unfortunately), this doesn’t mean you’ve lost weight. Well, at least not the weight that really matters to most of us—as in the type that means you’ve lost body fat.

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“Your true weight is based on your body stores, and only decreases when your energy intake is less than the energy you’re burning, ” says Charlotte Martin, MS, RDN, CSOWM, CPT. Meaning, of course, your weight changes when you eat differently and you exercise more. So the weight loss from pooping is incredibly temporary.

What’s more, poop can vary in how much it weighs based on how often you poop and on what each poop is like. “Some people only go to the bathroom every few days, and this can cause your stool to weigh more, ” Rizzo says, for example. The weight of your poop also depends on your body size and your food and water intake. “For example, those who eat less fiber tend to have less heavy poops, ” adds Martin.

Pooping isn’t a legitimate weight loss approach, but it is a necessary, important, and normal bodily function that can make us feel a little lighter immediately after doing it (here's how to tell it it's healthy). “This lighter and trimmer feeling is more about the de-bloating than loss of actual body mass, ” says Martin.

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Having a bowel movement can help relieve bloat by not only ridding some of that solid mass (aka poop) in your GI tract but also allowing trapped gas to escape. “When your stool is backed up in the large intestine, it can cause that uncomfortable bloated feeling. Plus, intestinal gas gets trapped behind it, only adding to the bloat, ” says Martin.

If you go more than your pal, or vice versa, don’t freak out. “Frequency can vary from person to person. Some people go twice a day and some people go every other day. As long as what is normal for you stays the same most days, then that’s perfectly fine, ” says Rizzo.

Staying hydrated (“drink enough every day so your urine is pale yellow, ” says Rizzo) and exercising both help you stay regular. And it’s essential to eat fiber-rich foods like legumes, fruits, veggies and whole grains, says Rizzo. Start with these incredibly easy ways to get more fiber—that also happen to really taste good (time to let go of the idea that high-fiber foods taste like cardboard).

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You should be getting 30 grams of fiber a day, and it’s easier than you think. Use this plan to get it all in throughout the day, while eating normal, good foods—even from your favorite fast casual spots.

Isadora Baum is a freelance writer, certified health coach, and author of 5-Minute Energy. She can't resist a good sample, a margarita, a new HIIT class, or an easy laugh. Learn more about her on her website: isadorabaum.com.

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