by NeuropathicGuy » 24 Mar 2010, 01:03
Hey Kate,
Without knowing what you're eating, it's hard to say. But my guess would be not enough water and possibly not enough fiber.
The source of the fiber matters too IMO. For example I easily hit at least 25 grams of fiber a day. In fact there are often days when I'm already around 25 grams by lunchtime. But if I don't drink enough water, or if I got all of the fiber from eating hard things like crackers, then I can still get difficult BMs. For me boiled veggies seem to work out the best. I eat nearly the same exact thing every single day for every single meal and have a pretty good handle on how my diet affects my poops at this point. One embarrassing truth is that if I get a lot of gas in the afternoon, then I know I've had a ton of fiber already and it's going to be smooth sailing as far as BMs go in the near future :)
Personally every morning I start off with a fiber bar, the kind from Fiber One or Eating Right that has 35% fiber for the day. Then for lunch I eat either veggie soup or brown rice sushi (since brown rice is super high fiber). For dinner I eat veggie soup and a big plate of soy beans. I've added it all up before and it comes out to well over 25 grams of fiber daily. Then I take Miralax and drink a ton of water. And rinse, lather, and repeat day after day :) Actually by the end of most days, I've had so much fiber that if desired, I can allow myself to munch on a few potato chips and chocolate bars to help keep my weight up. When eating like this (which obviously sucks day after day but anything to keep the fissure symptoms down!) the only times I've have hard poops are when I don't drink much water through the day.
The unfortunate thing is that even after doing this for months and months, all it takes is one small slip-up to undo all of the stinkin' progress :(