What Healthy Poop Actually Looks Like | 201

Welcome to the Follow Your Gut Podcast. I'm your host, Juniper. 

Today we are talking about something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. And when it does get talked about, it's talked about very negatively: Poop.

Your poop and your child's poop gives you such an incredible insight. Poop is one of the most beautiful windows into our internal health. And yet we've all been so deeply ingrained to believe that poop is gross, it stinks, it's disgusting, it's something you don't want to look at, it's shameful. I mean, I remember being a child and being so embarrassed to poop. I wouldn't poop in public. I trained my body to hold my poop all day long for multiple days if I needed to, until I was at home and preferably alone. If I was at a friend's house and I really, really, really had to poop, I would run the faucet so no one would hear my poop splash into the toilet. This has been ingrained so deeply in all of us, and I think it's actually very subconscious. 

Think about how we change a baby's diaper. We say, ew, it's gross, it stinks, we plug our noses, we wave our hands in front of our face to try to blow the the stink away. As a culture, we make really negative remarks about this very natural, beautiful part of being alive. Pooping is part of being alive. But when a child hears, ew, you pooped every time they poop, what are we teaching them? When we plug our noses, we make disgusted faces. We rush them through a diaper change or act embarrassed when somebody hears us in the bathroom. What message are we creating? We're teaching them that something their body has to do is dirty, shameful, and embarrassing.

And there's a great contradiction here because the body has to eliminate. But when the mind has been so conditioned to believe that elimination is disgusting, it creates a sort of war inside the body. so our bodies respond to our thoughts and our beliefs and we find ourselves clenching or we're holding it in, we ignore the urge, we rush, we wait until we're alone. We teach our bodies and our children's bodies that the natural urge to poop is something we have to control instead of something we just need to simply listen to. This creates such an internal conflict that contributes to withholding, constipation, urgency, and changes in how the bowels function.

It isn't kind to expect our bodies to eliminate with ease while repeatedly sending messages that illumination is gross, it's embarrassing, it's unsafe, it's shameful. So I want to invite you to see poop through an entirely different lens. I want to beautify poop. I want to glorify pooping. Because poop is your body's miraculous way of eliminating what it doesn't need and what doesn't belong inside of it. Your body takes in food, it breaks that food down, it absorbs the nutrients it can use, it moves what remains through your digestive tract, it combines that material with bacteria, water, bile, shed cells, and waste. It forms it into a stool and carries it out of your body. 

This isn't disgusting. This is absolute brilliance. Look at how magic, how amazing your body is. Pooping isn't the gross thing your body does after the important work is finished. Pooping is part of the important work. And your poop gives you information about how that work is actually going on the inside. It tells you about digestion and absorption. It tells you how food and waste are moving through the digestive tract. It tells you whether your body is holding too much water or releasing too much water. It tells you whether your stool is moving too slowly or too quickly. It can show you mucus, undigested food, changes in bile, Microbial activity and the material your body is trying to release your poop is honest. 

So instead of flushing it as quickly as possible, I want you to start actually looking at it. You don't have to get chopsticks and dissect it if you don't want to, but I want you to notice what you're seeing. I want you to become comfortable with poop and change your internal dialogue around what it actually is. Pay attention to frequency, ease, consistency, shape, color, smell, whether it floats or sinks, whether you can see food or mucus, and how your body or your child's body feels before, during, and after pooping.

Now one unusual poop. This is enough to give you information, but a repeated pattern is what really shows you that something about your digestion, absorption, motility, your gut lining, or your microbiome that any part of that might need some attention, some intentional care. But if we're not looking at our poop, we're gonna miss that invitation.

Now I want to break poop down during different life stages so you know exactly what you're looking for. 

Let's start with babies because a baby's poop is different from a toddler's poop and it changes based on what and how they're fed. A newborn's first poops are called meconium. This is that dark greenish-black, thick, sticky, almost tar-like poop, is what you see during the first minutes, hours, or maybe the first couple days after birth.

Your baby is clearing material that accumulated for nine months. Isn't that so magic to think about? Once the meconium has passed, a breastfed baby's poop usually becomes more yellow, almost like a golden mustard color. It can be loose and look seedy or curdled, almost like mustard with really soft seeds in it. Young breastfed babies often poop several times a day, sometimes after every feeding.

As they grow, the frequency can change. What matters though is that their poop remains soft, that they're feeding well, they're growing, they're comfortable, and pooping isn't painful and they're not straining. 

A formula-fed baby's poop is typically thicker. It might look more like a paste, so kind of like peanut butter or a soft clay. It can be yellow, but it's a different yellow than breastfed baby. It's more almost like a yellow tan or a brown. And it usually has a stronger smell than the poop of an exclusively breastfed baby.

But thick isn't the same as hard. Hard, dry like poops. So they're almost like pellets or poops that cause pain. Or if you notice that your baby is visibly struggling and straining to get their poop out, this tells us that they are not eliminating optimally. With any baby, whether breastfed or formula fed, I want you to pay attention to excessive mucus, consistently watery poops, hard pellets, discomfort, straining, or poop that's white, pale, black, or tar-like after the newborn meconium has passed. 

Also look for more unusual material. You might see strings or cloudy material, jelly-like mucus, thin skins, small white specks, maybe long fibrous material, or something that resembles yeast. So this is gonna look frothy, a little bit bubbly, biofilm, worms or flukes. 

So let me explain a little bit what each of these looks like.

Mucus, it can look clear or white or yellowish. It can be stringy or more jelly like, and it might coat the entire poop or just appear as little globs throughout the poop. Biofilm can look more it's it's more translucent, cloudy, stringy, or tissue like. It can almost look like a wet skin or a thin membrane around a more solid poop. Or, you know, as an infant, whether breastfeeding or formula fat, before they're eating salt food solid foods, they're not gonna have a solid poop. So biofilm in an infant poop, it's going to more look like a wet skin. Like they've pooped a layer of skin. Yeast can again it can look white or frothy, cloudy, or really almost a lot of times yeast will look almost like cottage cheese.

Flukes can look gelatinous. Sometimes they're almost like a little bubble. It almost looks like a whole peanut, but you know that your child hasn't eaten a peanut. They can also be flat, so almost more like a a tiny leaf. Or if they're in their later stages, it can look like a tomato skin when again you know that your child has not eaten that food.

Other parasites can look long, stringy, or rope-like. Pinworms are very small white worms.

So what I really want to do here is create a shift where you aren't plugging your nose, you're kind of looking without actually looking and throwing the diaper away as quickly as you possibly can. You're pausing to recognize what a powerful tool you have in your hand.

Now, when babies begin eating solid foods, their poop, of course, changes. It becomes more brown, thicker, more formed, and much smellier. The smell changes because the food and the microbial activity inside the gut have changed. This is also when you might begin noticing food in your child's diaper.

An occasional blueberry skin or a cornhole, a pea skin, or maybe it's a whole sunflower seed, you might see this wholeness in your child's diaper. If it's occasionally, it's just because your baby or your toddler, their body is still learning. They're learning how to chew and some plant fibers are more difficult to break down. But when you're consistently seeing large amounts of food coming through, looking almost exactly the way it looked when it went in you really need to start paying attention.

So I'm talking about whole blueberries, whole beans, entire chunks of vegetables. Whole pumpkin seeds or whole, maybe even the seeds from a strawberry, when their diaper is filled with recognizable food, this is really important information because food doesn't only need to enter your child's body, it has to be broken down, absorbed, and used. Your child can eat the most beautiful, nutrient-dense diet in the world, but if their digestive system isn't breaking that food down and absorbing what it needs, those nutrients are passing right through their body without being fully used.

Consistently seeing undigested food in your child's poop tells us that their gut is imbalanced. Their body is not breaking down their food optimally, and they're not getting the nutrients that they need. This is exactly why we can't look at one symptom in isolation. We have to look at the whole pattern. What else might be happening? If they have consistent chunks of undigested food in their poop, I'm going to bet that they are also experiencing bloating or stomach pain. Maybe they have chronic diarrhea or constipation. You're seeing a lot of mucus in their poop. Maybe they have eczema or a chronic diaper rash. They are experiencing negative reactions to different foods. Or maybe their appetite is really low.

Is their growth slowed or delayed? Poop really allows you to see part of what is happening to the food after your child eats it.

As your baby becomes a toddler, healthy poop should become more formed. In a diaper, you want to see it should be a cohesive, soft poop. It should hold together almost like play-doh, but it shouldn't be dry, hard, cracked, or made of separate little balls. And a toddler passing little smears all day, this isn't necessarily eliminating well. Those small smears can happen when softer poop moves around harder poop that is stuck in the bowel.

So you really need to be looking at the entire experience. Is your child hiding to poop? Are they crossing their legs or squeezing their butt cheeks together? Are they standing stiffly on their tiptoes? Are they losing their appetite and then suddenly so hungry after they poop? Are they irritable, restless, anxious, or unable to settle? 

If you're seeing these things, I want you to track it back. How long ago did they poop? Are they passing enormous poops that clog the toilet? Are they going several days and then having an explosive poop? All of this is important communication. I also want you to smell the poop. You don't have to stick your nose into the diaper in the toilet, but be present with the smell. Be accepting of the smell. Poop is, of course, gonna smell like poop. It's not going to smell like flowers, but there's a difference between the natural smell of poop and a smell that is so strong and putrid that it clears a room. It shouldn't smell sour or acidic or fermented or metallic. It should be pretty neutral.

Once a child is pooping in the toilet, what we're looking for becomes very similar to what we're looking for in an adult. A healthy poop is brown, formed, soft, and cohesive. I want you to think of it like a smooth, skinny snake. It comes out easily. You aren't holding your breath or bearing down with your entire body. You aren't sweating. You don't have to rock back and forth. You're not sitting there for 30 minutes.

You shouldn't need to strain. It shouldn't hurt. You shouldn't feel panicked by a sudden urgency every time. And when you're finished, you should feel finished. You shouldn't feel like there's more stuck inside.

If you're seeing hard, separate pellets, this tells us that your poop has been sitting for too long in the colon and too much water has been absorbed from it. A thick, hard, cracked like log, this is still constipation, even if you're pooping every day. this part is really important because frequency alone doesn't tell us whether you're eliminating well. You can poop every day and still be constipated if your stool is hard, if it's difficult to pass, if it's incomplete, or if retained poop remains in your bowel. 

At the other end of this, fluffy pieces or mush, ragged fragments, or straight water poop. This tells us that your poop is moving too quickly and it isn't being formed or held properly. Chronic constipation and chronic diarrhea look like opposites, but both actually show us that the body isn't moving, forming, and eliminating optimally. They're both connected to the same root cause, just presenting differently. And this is why both really require us to ask what's happening inside the gut.

Before we get into that further, should poop float or sink? Healthy formed poop usually sinks.

Floating poop often contains trapped gas. When it also looks greasy, oily, sticky, if you notice a film on the water, if your poop is difficult to flush or it sticks to the toilet, this shows us that your body isn't breaking down and absorbing fat optimally. Now again, this isn't about becoming afraid of one strange poop. It's about recognizing patterns. I want your body and your child's body eliminating consistently, comfortably, and completely. I want the poop to happen without pain or fear or force or everyone celebrating because someone finally pooped after five days.

And when that poop was stuck inside for those five days, whether it was you or your child or someone else in your home, it didn't only affect the bowel, it affected sleep, appetite, anxiety, mood, behavior, skin, and how the entire body felt. 

Pooping should be a normal, comfortable part of every day because elimination affects the entire body.

Now we need to talk about how your poop can change throughout your menstrual cycle. Some women notice slower digestion and harder poops before their period during their luteal phase. Some experience looser, more frequent poops when their period begins. Hormonal changes influence motility because the gut and the rest of the body are so intimately connected.

This of course means that poop changes during pregnancy too. Hormonal shifts can slow digestion.

I want to acknowledge here that constipation is very common during pregnancy, but common does not mean normal. Consistent elimination matters all the time, and it matters deeply during pregnancy. 

Now, before we wrap up, let's talk briefly about laxatives and fiber. When you go to the doctor and you share a concern about poop, you are most likely given a quick solution. Take this laxative, give your child miralax, add more fiber. These tools will, of course, change the next poop, but they don't answer why the body isn't pooping healthily in the first place. I'm not telling you to leave yourself or your child backed up. I want your body pooping but a laxative only helps move a stuck poop and it creates the next bowel movement. Fiber can add bulk and help form a solid poop, but that isn't the end of the story. If a laxative is the only reason you're pooping, we need to understand why the bowel isn't moving consistently on its own. If you are adding fiber because you're having frequent watery poops, But you're still afraid to leave your home because you don't know whether you'll be close enough to a bathroom. We haven't addressed why the diarrhea is happening. We need to go deeper than the next poop. 

Bad bacteria, yeast, mold, fungus, parasites, and other harmful overgrowths change the internal environment of the gut. They take up space that needs to belong to beneficial bacteria. They create inflammation. They affect digestion and absorption, influence motility, and change the way food and waste move through the body. 

This is why a gut imbalance can show up through constipation in one person and chronic diarrhea in another. It can show up through mucus, unusual fermentation, overwhelming smells, again, that sour or acidic smell, undigested food, greasy, floating poops, urgency, incomplete elimination, or a body that can't poop without outside help. 

I just want to be clear though that an unhealthy poop isn't a diagnosis of one specific overgrowth. It's evidence that something about digestion, absorption, motility, the gut lining, and the microbiome needs attention. And when we see these patterns alongside other symptoms like eczema, food reactions, bloating, recurring infections, anxiety, poor sleep, hormone imbalance, or immune struggles, the larger picture becomes even clearer. The microbiome is the foundation connecting all of it. 

This is why rebalancing is so different from creating another temporary solution for constipation or diarrhea. We aren't choosing one organism and pretending it's the whole problem. We are changing the internal environment that allowed harmful overgrowths to take up so much space while beneficial bacteria became depleted. We're clearing what doesn't belong and replenishing what the body needs. 

And this brings us to drainage. You have heard me talk about drainage pathways. Your drainage pathways are how your body moves out what it no longer needs. Pooping is one of your body's main drainage pathways. The body can begin releasing bad bacteria, yeast, mold, fungus, parasites, toxins, heavy metals, and waste, but the work isn't finished until those things actually leave the body. An exit route only works when the material actually leaves. 

This matters all the time, whether you are rebalancing or not. Your body is always processing food, bacteria, hormones, toxins, and waste every single day. Your poop is what carries that material out.

Your poop isn't simply telling you whether you ate enough fiber yesterday. It's showing you how effectively your body is digesting, absorbing, moving, forming, and releasing. This is exactly what the ōNLē rebalance method was designed to support.

It not only clears harmful bacteria, yeast, mold, fungus, parasites, toxins, heavy metals, and waste while also replenishing the gut with beneficial bacteria so the microbiome can rebuild, but it's also supporting the body in carrying out what's being released while restoring the essential minerals your body needs to digest, absorb, regulate, and heal. 

And the ōNLē method course teaches you how to prepare your body, support your drainage pathways beyond poop, understand the role food plays in your healing, and move you through the process without having to piece everything together yourself. The goal isn't one perfect poop. The goal is consistent, healthy elimination from a body that's digesting food, absorbing nutrients, moving waste, and communicating clearly.

So here's what I want you to do after listening to this episode. Look before you flush, smell before you flush. Look at your baby's diaper. Look at your toddler's poop. Talk about poop in your home like it's the normal thing that it is. Stop implying that your child's poop is disgusting. You don't have to pretend that the smell is pleasant, but you also don't have to make a big scene about how stinky it is.

Acknowledge out loud how brilliant the body is, the human body is. Say look at how smart your body is. Look at how resilient you are. Look at how your body knows how to let go of exactly the right things. Create a culture shift in your home. Poop is part of being alive. Poop is one of your body's main ways of clearing out. And poop is one of the most honest windows you have into your internal health. Stop looking away.

Your body is communicating with you every single day. Look at it. Listen to it. And when the pattern shows you that the foundation needs support, rebalance it.