Why You’re Not Pooping The Way You Should (And What To Do About It) With Liz Roman

This is the transcript of an interview hosted on Ruth’s Feel Better. Live Free. podcast.

Ruth Soukup: Let’s be honest, it’s not that easy to talk about poop. And yet, pooping is a pretty big deal. It’s one of the biggest indicators of metabolic health, and not pooping well is a huge red flag for any number of gut and health issues. And so today, we’re going to talk about it with none other than the poop queen herself: Liz Roman.

Welcome to the feel better, live free podcast brought to you by Thinlicious. I’m your host, Ruth Soukup, and here we’ll talk about everything from the science of weight loss to practical tips for making your health a priority in the midst of a busy life. It’s a little bit nerdy, a little bit funny, and a little bit revolutionary.

So buckle up friend, because it’s about to get nerdy.

Hey there, and welcome back to the Feel Better Live Free podcast. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ruth Soukup, and I’m the founder of Thinlicious and the creator of the Thin Adapted System, as well as the New York Times bestselling author of seven books. And today we are chatting with Liz Roman, who famously, or maybe infamously, is known as The Poop Queen.

Liz is the host of the Health Revival podcast, as well as a certified functional nutritional practitioner and restorative wellness practitioner specializing in gut health and holistic healing. She’s also the founder of Fit Mom, a top tier functional nutrition practice where she is dedicated to uncovering and addressing the root causes of digestive disorders.

hormonal imbalances, autoimmune challenges, and metabolic health issues. And today she is sharing with us what every single woman needs to know about our poop, including why we don’t always poop the way we should and how we can start pooping a whole lot better. This is probably one of those episodes where you’re going to want to take notes.

So without further ado, I am so excited to be able to introduce you to today’s interview guest, Liz Roman. Liz, thank you so much for being here today. I’m so excited to talk to you. 

Liz Roman: Hi, Ruth. Thank you. I’m excited. And I think this is going to be a great conversation for your audience. There’s so many women struggle with this and maybe they don’t even know it yet.

Ruth Soukup: I think that is probably true. So let’s just start with a little bit of background. Tell us who you are, what you do and how you got to be doing what you are now. 

Liz Roman: Yeah, absolutely. So I am Liz Broman. If you are on social media, I am the poop queen. Like many functional practitioners, my story starts with my personal experience.

I went to doctors for about eight years and all my symptoms fell on deaf ears. I was over 200 pounds, couldn’t lose weight, had skin spots, hormonal acne, horrible PMS. And constipation. and they were just like, okay, well, let’s do a colonoscopy that looks clear. Take Miralox, drink water and eat more fiber.

And I was like, this is not just due to, you know, lack of fiber in Miralox. and by the way, no one should be drinking Miralox. We can talk about that later, but, you know, I found functional medicine shortly after college, and I would say that it saved my life, because I was then diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and really got down to the root cause of what was going on.

And that’s why I do what I do now, helping women just like you, right. all over the world, transform, and reclaim their health. because, you know, when we go and we talk to so many doctors and there are some amazing ones out there, and we don’t find. You know, solutions, generally it turns into medications and it’s this medication.

It’s that medication takes Olaf, take birth control, whatever it might be to try to just get that person out of the office and get them a little bit of symptom relief. My goal is to really help people get to the root cause, so that they can understand their body and tune in, but also fix it for the long haul.

Ruth Soukup: Yes, preach. I love it. I bet is what we talk about all the time here. And then like system that we have that goes straight to medication just to like address the symptoms, but never heal. The root issues is makes me crazy. Makes me crazy. So how did we like, in your opinion, how did we get here to this crisis?

Because it is. A crisis crisis with, with women’s health and, and specifically, can you speak a little bit more to that actually is like what, what are the statistics on Yeah. Constipation and, and this kind of issue. 

Liz Roman: Yeah. So we have to keep in mind as we talk through this, these are the statistics of people actually going into the doctor and saying, Hey, I’m constipated.

Right? Getting colonoscopies or, you know, talking with their primary care, whatever it might be reported. constipation, let’s put it that way, right? So 6. 9 billion is the cost of, you know, indirect medical costs essentially. And that can include everything from, you know, the laxatives that they’re taking, maybe prescriptions, you know, whether that is Motegrity or Linzess, it could be the colonoscopy treatments, things like that, that they’ve kind of bucketed, you know, under this.

And then generally you fall into a category of IBSC, which is, as I say, a BS catch all diagnosis because this irritable bowel syndrome, right? We know when we talk about syndromes, it’s generally there’s not a lot of test for it. It’s just an accumulation of symptoms. And so they kind of slap that label on you and say, Take MiraLax, eat, you know, more fiber, stay hydrated and you know, if we need to try pharmaceuticals, we can do that.

But we, we don’t even know how many women, and we’ll talk about this, are struggling with some form of constipation that’s unreported because it is taboo. Like you mentioned in one of the questions that you wanna talk about, like, why don’t we talk about these things? Well, I don’t think anybody really wants to talk about poop, but I do every day on Instagram because you know, I’ll tell you, it got to the point where we would.

I would tell my roommates in college like victory. Like I finally pooped, you know, because it’s so uncomfortable. You’re so miserable. You’re bloated. You’re gassy. You’re tired. You’ve got brain fog. You just don’t feel good, when you’re not fully eliminating. And so while it is a bit embarrassing for some people, I will refer you back to the children’s book that everybody poops.

we need to talk about it and we need to educate. you know, our, our children, as I was sharing with you before, I have a five and a half year old son and it’s just another little boy that we had about five weeks ago. I’m always talking with them, or at least, you know, obviously by five and a half year old about poop.

Did we poop today? what is this like? And are we straining? Do you feel good? And thankfully he poops like a champion. but I know a lot of little kids also struggle with this too. And so I have resources for that as well. But I think as moms, you know, we have to be in tune with ourself first, but then we also have to be in tune.

Enough to talk with our children about it, to educate, because I think so many people don’t realize this is an issue simply because it’s, it’s not talked about enough. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Yeah. I like to say it’s the mark of a good friendship when you can actually talk about poop with your friends. So funny. So can you help us unpack kind of what.

This like chronic constipation really means and how to like, if somebody is listening to this right now going, I might have poop issues. Like, I don’t even know because I don’t really talk about it. No, nobody talks about it. Like, how do you, how do you know? Like, what are the, what are the signs? 

Liz Roman: Yeah, absolutely.

So when we look at the definition of constipation from a functional medicine perspective, I want you fully eliminating every day. One to three times a day pain free is really ideal and we can talk about the pain free part When you think about the conventional model, they say, you know, if you’re pooping three times a week, that’s pretty good.

You’re you’re fine Well, and I would say from a female standpoint if you are a menstruating female There are going to be some days sure that you know, maybe you don’t go to the bathroom You’re leading into your period your progesterone is really high That slows things down and maybe you don’t go, well, let’s give it some help.

Let’s take some extra magnesium the week before your period, because we want to fully eliminate. And the main reason we want to fully eliminate is that this is waste. This is metabolic byproducts. This is waste from food. This is toxins. This is metabolized hormones. It’s all set in your colon. We’re excretion.

And when we’re not fully eliminating, like not only do we have some of these uncomfortable and sensations, you know, of a bloating and maybe feeling gassy or just overly full, but we also overburden the liver because all of those toxins and things that are set for elimination, including the hormones. Big one here is estrogen, which we can always talk about more, but that, that goes back in line to get reprocessed by the liver.

Well, now you’ve got that on top of all of the other things your liver is trying to process from your day to day life, whether that is, you know, again, food, it’s chemicals and your environment, things you’re breathing in, you’re putting on your skin, whatever that looks like. We know that we are exposed to over 700, 000 chemicals like.

Your liver’s got a big job to do. The last thing that it needs is more work to do because you’re not fully eliminating. So that’s a big thing. But when we think about, you know, day to day, what does this look like? If you look at a Bristol stool chart, I always say number four is what we’re going for. Okay.

So it should be sausage, like smooth, easy to pass. You get the signal. I need to go to the bathroom. You go to the bathroom and all good. It shouldn’t be things that are really urgent. Like we’re, you know, nervous. Oh gosh, I don’t know if I’m going to make it. it shouldn’t be hard and pebbly floating. You know, you’re straining to go to the bathroom.

That’s a big sign of a lot of liver gallbladder issues, but can also be a sign of dehydration. So we want to be mindful that like this is the way God designed us to eliminate waste outside of urinating and sweating. It shouldn’t be, you know, hard. So we want to get right there in the middle, three to four, if you’re looking at a Bristol stool chart, and I think for many women, when they start to think about it, they might go, Oh, it is kind of hard to go to the bathroom or like, yeah, I have those kind of publicly like rocky, bowel movements.

And so if that’s you, you know, those are things that you also want to watch out for. And then the biggest thing is that you feel satisfied. And I know that can feel and sound really strange to talk about when we’re thinking of poop, but like you feel relieved. You feel like, ah, that was good. Like that was the good poop.

Yep. I say 

Ruth Soukup: that a lot. That’s a good poop. Proud of that poop. It’s a good sign of a good husband when you can talk about poop too. 

Liz Roman: Or like I said, if my husband, so our little guy, he’s, five weeks and you know, like the week three to four kind of things shifting and whatever. I was talking to a little pediatrician yesterday about this and their little digestive systems, you know, just kind of getting used to things.

So we call it victory in our house, right? I’m like, we got a victory here, you know? So yes, but we want to have a good poop. I like that term too. 

Ruth Soukup: Yes. So what, like, like, first of all that you talked about this chart. So how do you with the Bristol chart? Was that the name of it? Bristol poop chart. Is this, I’m assuming something you can Google and it’ll come up.

So Bristol poop chart. And do you have one that we can link to in our? Yeah, I can show notes. 

Liz Roman: but yeah, there’s a lot of them out there. Essentially, you know, when you’re looking at it, you’re going to have kind of a, a range of very hard, rocky, pebbly, it almost looks like, let’s say like, chocolate covered almonds.

all the way to that really loose watery stool. And there’s a few different types that they kind of show there on the different, even more like diarrhea, like a side. So in the middle three and four, cause I believe there’s seven on most of them in the middle, three to four is really what you want. And that is again, a smooth sausage shaped three is going to show you a little bit more kind of like dehydrated.

So it’s like cracks. In there. Whereas four is just kinda like a beautiful sausage. and, and really you want it to also be snake-like, because our colon is so windy. I always say to people like, if it looks like an s that’s a pretty good one too. so yeah, just you can, I can send you a, a image that you can link out or you can, you know, if you’re listening to this, look up the Bristol stool chart, just Google it, you’ll see it pop up.

and again, number four is really what you’re. You’re going for, and it shouldn’t float, should not float. No, if we have floaters, this is really a sign of undigested fat in the stool. So again, we’re going to think about liver gallbladder health here. in my practice, I talk a lot about liver gallbladder health because yes, gut health is extremely important.

And there are many things that can contribute to constipation in terms of infections, inflammation in the GI tract or insufficiencies of. Stomach acid, pancreatic enzymes, but also bile. So, bile is a gastric juice that’s secreted by your liver. And it’s stored and concentrated in your gallbladder. If you still have a gallbladder, a lot of women have their gallbladders removed.

but even after removal, it’s really, really important to think about supporting this. Because, bile does a lot of things for us. that are very, very important, but part of it is that it also helps, keep bacteria in check in the small intestine and also lubricates, the colon so that you can go to the bathroom.

And many times in my practice, I deal a lot with chronic gut health cases. Yeah, there are things going on in the gut that we need to address, but we also have to really heavily focus on the liver and gallbladder health. If we miss that piece. We struggle to fully heal. I see this a lot with people who have reoccurring SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or just really cannot seem to, you know, move fully through their healing protocols.

They’ve, they’ve really got some stuff going on with the liver gallbladder that it’s got to be addressed. 

Ruth Soukup: Interesting. Interesting. And so the biggest sign of that is that your poop is floating, even if you’re eating a high fat diet. 

Liz Roman: Yeah. So, I mean, if you’re eating a high fat diet, I would be saying to the person who’s doing that, like think about ways that you can stimulate more bile or support directly with things like ox bile.

You could do taurine. I love like choline or phospholipid, complexes to cause a really great product. So bile helps us break down fats. It helps us emulsify fats. And so when we think about absorbing all those nutrients that we want from good, healthy, let’s say grass fed steak or avocado, nut butters, things like that, we want to absorb all of that, right?

So it’s one thing to ingest food. It’s another thing to actually digest food. So anytime I’ve got a client going through like a phase of keto or real high fat diet, we’re always supporting with a little bit of ox bile. You should still have. Number four. I know some people will kind of go through a period of time where of course you’re going to adjust to this because you’ve, you know, gone, to kind of flip the switch here from maybe a low fat or moderate fat to really high fat, but this is where you want to help the system then keep up with what it needs to break those things down so that you are not having some people will get like more urgent, trips to the bathroom because sometimes you can get like a bile dump to the small intestine.

It floods it. Essentially, and then pulls a lot of water in and then you got to go urgently. So I always say, you know, person to person, depending upon if you’ve got a gallbladder or not, make sure that you are supporting appropriately with what you need to tolerate and break down those things.

Ruth Soukup: Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Because that’s obviously we talk a lot about healthy fat here on this podcast and getting more healthy facts. It’s so important for hormonal regulation and most women, you know, we’ve been so ingrained with this, like low fat is healthy and so flipping the switch, but it’s really interesting to hear you say that like the, if your body’s not digesting the fat and with the liver, that it can be hard on your liver.

And, and yes, we have, I have lots of women in our program who have had their gallbladder removed. It’s very. Very, very common, unfortunately. So it’s so interesting. So let’s talk a little bit more about that. Like the role that diet plays in constipation and foods that women should be cautious about just kind of as a general rule.

Liz Roman: Yeah. So I want to quickly just add one thing, cause you mentioned hormones. So another really important piece of bile is helping you eliminate estrogen. Right. So what do we see for women, especially without a gallbladder is a lot of estrogen dominance, right? Some of this happens naturally after the age of 35 with the progesterone declining.

That’s one thing I want to talk to God about when I get, 

Ruth Soukup: get 

Liz Roman: up there. I’m taking progesterone right now. Postpartum it is. It’s to me, my favorite hormone, in many ways, but if you are somebody who is struggling a lot with, you know, estrogen imbalance, or you’re working on your hormones, we gotta make sure that you’re eliminating.

If you’re not again, all that stuff’s going back to the liver, especially estrogen. And then we generally see that we struggle to balance our hormones. So bio is really important for that as well. Okay. In terms of diet. So I think that I might differ from other functional practitioners, because I’m not going to sit here and tell you to cut everything out of your diet and do an elimination diet.

That’s not the first step that I’m going to say that I think is important. What I think is important, because I agree with you wholeheartedly. I grew up in the 1990s and fat was going to make you fat. I did Weight Watchers. I did the whole diet train of low fat and everything. You know, zero 

Ruth Soukup: calories, less strength, gross chips, like gross you out.

Thinking about that even now, like what are we thinking? Yeah. These potato chips that make you have like explosive diarrhea. 

Liz Roman: I basically deemed anything that had like a Weight Watchers point on it or the a hundred calorie packs is like healthy. Right. So there’s like only a hundred dollars. so that fat is super important, as you mentioned for our hormones.

and many other things, you know, in the body as well, blood sugar regulation and whatnot. But what I tell people first and foremost is get on a whole foods diet. Right. We really want to, when we think about the quality of our food, I want to focus on quality more than I want to focus on what I need to eliminate.

So add more good to your day. And that’s going to be fibrous foods. The average American consumes 10 to 15 grams of fiber. and our ancestors used to consume a hundred plus grams of fiber. So. Really for my women that I work with, we generally target and aim somewhere in the ballpark of like 35 to 50 grams.

Maybe some people can tolerate more, some people have to really go slow and work their way up depending upon what’s going on with their gut microbiome, what their diet’s been like in the past. But I would say focus more on the quality of the food. So instead of just going, for example, I’m going to just cut out dairy.

Right. Well, let’s focus on maybe a good quality, organic, a two dairy source and see if you can tolerate that. let’s focus on a lot of fruits and vegetables, a lot of diversity in our diets, before we just go cut everything out. I think there’s a time and a place for elimination diets, but I think we as a society have gotten so, and I will say that I’m not going to throw, you know, Rocks at a glass house here.

I’m five weeks postpartum. I am in the convenience mode at this point in time, but we’ve gotten so far out on the convenience side of things that we don’t consume enough one ingredient whole foods. 

Ruth Soukup: Yes. 

Liz Roman: And that’s what we need. 

Ruth Soukup: Yes. And I 100 percent agree with that. And I, I think that’s, this is so important to talk about because obviously in my program and here on this podcast, I talk a lot about high protein, you know, high fat and, or getting plenty of healthy fat more than women.

Most women are used to, especially in our. Age demographic growing up in the eighties and nineties with that, all the low fat crease, it’s hard to get out of that mindset. But I think it really comes down to, I hate all this stuff. That’s marketed keto, right? All this processed garbage that is like, well, it says keto.

Isn’t that okay? Like, no, that’s not like, I’m not a keto advocate. I am a. Nourish your body advocate. And I am never going to tell you to not eat food that was created the way God intended it, right? The way nature intended it, because I don’t believe that God creates garbage for us. I think humans create garbage for us.

So that is like so, so important. So even if you are like, well, I don’t want to like cut out all foods. Don’t don’t cut out foods, but cut out the crap cut out just the chemicals in the process and anything. I’m so I’m so all with you with on that. I did have another question though, about because one thing I’ve been paying a lot of attention to recently because my sister has kind of gone down this road is the carnivore.

Diet a little bit more. And, I’m really curious how fiber plays into that because I’ve been seeing a lot of, you know, carnivore advocates who are like, no, no, you don’t need fiber. You don’t need fiber. If you’re eating all meat, you’re getting everything that you need. And I’m just curious where you stand on that.

Liz Roman: Yeah, it’s temporary. It’s a diet for me, just like FODMAP. Honestly, I deal a lot, like I said, with a lot of chronic gut health cases, and there are times and places that we need to go this extreme, and the big thing that’s. I use carnivore for is if, you know, you’ve exhausted a lot of other options, you’ve removed five maps, you remove dairy, you’ve removed gluten.

Maybe we’ve even done, an MRT. It’s a mediator release test to look at how your immune system is responding to different foods and chemicals. And you’re just still struggling because the benefit of the carnivore diet is that essentially it does remove like. All fibers and anything that can kind of be an irritant, to the gut lectins and a variety of like plant based compounds that can, depending upon the state of the gut, be harmful or irritating.

So it can be useful temporarily while we heal because it just removes a lot of triggers. I have, and my husband actually went through a phase himself, where he did this. I have some of my clients who are doing carnivore pull in some berries, some oranges, some, you know, kind of easier to digest things to help with, fiber because I do believe fiber is really important or I will have them do, I love standard process, it’s a whole food, fiber powder because fiber is still important to bind to toxins, to bind to, you know, hormones, especially excess estrogen and to kind of mop things up and help clean things up and assist them out of the body.

So again, yeah. Temporarily, I think it could be a great diet, but I do think we have to be mindful of fiber at least after a few weeks, right? Maybe you give yourself two to four weeks real strict. I don’t recall who it is off the top of my head, but I could send you a follow up. She’s got a great website that helps you kind of ease into carnivore and out of it and she does keep in mind fiber.

I’m, just blanking on the name of who it is right now. So that is something that I do, but I don’t believe long term. Any diet such as You know, the low FODMAP, the specific carbohydrate diet, the keto diet, the carnivore diet should be the way that we live. I think that we should periodize our diet. We want a diverse diet for a diverse microbiome.

And when I say periodize your diet, I think it’s absolutely fine to go through seasons where I am more carnivore, I’m more keto, I’m more Mediterranean based, I’m high carb based, right? Depending upon the person and what they’re going through. you know, we have a lot of women that after they do the functional work, they want to do the physical work.

Right. They want to work on body composition. Okay. Well, then we need to get you fueled to put on some muscle mass, right? We can’t be in a calorie deficit here. Low carb and all these things. And we’re trying to put on muscle mass. No, we need to maybe go through a season where we do feed you up and we have more carbohydrates and, you know, we still have protein and fat and fibers and all those things, but you’re in that for a season and then you maybe cycle back.

down into more of a Mediterranean based, and then maybe into a keto carnivore fasting, you know, we use that in our program as well. So I just think that people get so bought into like, this is the only way because there are people out there who love carnivore and. That’s the only way to eat. And that’s going to be the way they eat for the rest of their life.

And if that works for them and they’re healthy metabolically and their, you know, blood work looks good or the hormones look good and they feel good. Great. I don’t believe that for the average person, they’re going to stick to something that restrictive for the rest of their life. And so we have to think about sustainability and recognize too, that food is.

It’s fuel for us. Yes, but it’s also part of our social environment. And I think that’s an important thing to recognize as well. 

Ruth Soukup: I love that. That’s a great answer. And I, and I agree, like I, I see that with a lot of people too. And I think if you’re having a lot of. Issues. It might be a good way to rule out a lot of issues, but I don’t, I don’t see that personally.

Like I love food too much to be able to, and I love me, but I would not be able to just do that. I love vegetables and I love fruit and I love all these other things too. So yeah, it’s, that’s, that’s really interesting to hear. And I love that. And I think the whole, like. Understanding the different phases and what your goals are in that phase is, is so important to you.

So what about hydration? How important is hydration to, you’re basically keeping your gut healthy and keeping your poop flowing. 

Liz Roman: Yeah, so we know that water is the most vital nutrient to the body, right? Like, we will die without it. and yet many people walk around drinking very little water. I think that when you, you know, look at just gut health in general, kind of going back to bile, what I mentioned before, bile is made up of 95 percent water.

We can’t expect the body to produce all of these gastric juices, including stomach acid, which is very, very important. stomach acid is the gastric juice that is secreted in the stomach when you ingest food, it is there to, basically detoxify things that you are consuming. So let’s say you’re like me, you like some sushi.

you know, we know that sushi, especially like undercooked meat, maybe steak, medium rare, we’re going to be a little bit more at risk. to bacteria or parasites or things like that in those types of foods. This is also why you have your wasabi and ginger. both of those things can be very anti parasitic, but the point here is that stomach acid is so important to detoxify and neutralize any of those pathogens that we’re exposed to.

but it’s also really important to help break down food so that it can move through the digestive tract and then the small intestine, you can absorb it. we need bile though. To also be, you know, robust. So stomach acid talks to the pancreas, it talks to the liver gallbladder, and it’s basically a signaling, you know, messenger as well to give you what you need.

And so if you are not hydrated, you’re not going to have good stomach acid levels. You’re not going to have great bio flow. You’re probably going to be more peanut butter, like sludgy bile than. Fluid and kind of like water. Like, so it’s super, super important just for those things. But then we also have to think about, right.

Like if you are going to the bathroom and you’re straining and you’re seeing kind of those tools that are dried and cracked. We need to make sure that we have proper mineral balance. We need to support our adrenals, those support, you know, our energy, our mood, hormones in general, your skin, right? Are you somebody that deals with a lot of dry skin?

It’s a big sign of dehydration, right? There’s all these little ways that your body’s going to tell you, Hey, I’m dehydrated. we know that if we look at the research, just increasing water. It can help you lose weight, right? It can help you, you know, want to move more and, you know, move things through the body at a faster pace.

You can’t eliminate toxins if you don’t have the proper levels of hydration. So it’s super, super important, not just for gut health and, you know, going to the bathroom every day and removing toxins, but also just for cognition, right? Like I mentioned, energy, skin health, all of the things. 

Ruth Soukup: So is there a way, like, to know exactly how much, how much water you should be drinking?

Is it just water? Is it making sure you’re, like, adding minerals to your water? Or like, like, what’s the, what’s the benchmark? What’s the guideline? 

Liz Roman: Yeah, so I’ll give you kind of the average recommendation, and then what I really aim to have my clients do. So first and foremost, we all know the wise tales.

Eight by eight, right? 64 ounces of water. I don’t think that’s necessarily enough. Sure. If you’re 120 pounds, maybe, and you’re not working out or things like that, but you have to take into account, you know, like sweating and exercise ways that we would, you know, lose more water. So first I would say half of your body weight in ounces is kind of a good benchmark.

If you are somebody who trains, strength trains, you go to the sauna regularly or, or an athlete, I think you need to go above that and do about two thirds of your body weight in ounces. I add electrolytes to most of my, my water, you know, that I’m consuming. So for me, first and foremost, we wake up in a dehydrated state.

I am a coffee lover through and through I’m waking up every two and a half hours right now to feed my son, right? What do I want in the morning? I want coffee But first I start my day with either lemon water and a pinch of sea salt to stimulate Digestion kind of help cleanse things out support the liver stimulate bile all these things Or I’ve been on a beet juice with lemon and pinch of sea salt kick recently and then I have my coffee Because like a lot of people wake up, especially women.

I don’t know if it’s just like mom life, but this is my hypothesis. We wake up and we go for coffee first thing. So I would say not to have caffeine. Yes. I used to do it too. I would say not to have caffeine until you’ve had some sort of, you know, hydration, and that could be tea tea can be hydrating as well.

If it’s a decaf tea or something like that, but you know, we do want to have a good amount of sodium. So I think electrolytes are really, really important. Every cell in your body is a sodium potassium pump. I see a lot of women who walk around feeling like waterlogged or inflamed, like they’ll say, I just have this outer layer of kind of just like puff.

Well, you’re not getting cellularly hydrated. So I like buoy drops. They are mineral drops that you can just put a squeeze into. very, very clean B U O Y is the brand there. phenomenal. you can use a good quality Celtic, you know, sea salt. You can add coconut water for potassium there if you would like lemon, lime, any of these citrus things are going to be really helpful, as well.

So I think, you know, that’s a good guideline from a hydration standpoint, but you mentioned like, how do I know if I like maybe need more pay attention to your bowel Think about your brain fog cognition, you know, fatigue, that’s really important, as well. So that can kind of be a sign of dehydration, but I think skin is also a big one, right?

Like if you have a lot of dried, skin, cracked skin, things like that, that’s important too. 

Ruth Soukup: Interesting. Okay. So I know that you’ve created some actionable steps and I would love to go through those. I don’t have too much time left, but I want to, do we have time to go through your. Your steps really quickly on how to combat chronic constipation.

Cause I think, I feel like there’s so many women who are listening to this going. I’ve never told anybody this. I won’t even talk about it with my husband, but I am like taking notes right now for every single thing to do. So lay it on us. Give us the, give us the six steps. 

Liz Roman: So first and foremost, I want you to think about how you start your day.

I always say how you start your day is going to be how you win your day. So there’s two things here. Number one, in the morning time, give yourself time colon cleansing time is between five and 7am. If you wake up and you’re rushing against the clock, your hair is on fire. You’re. Yelling at your kids, you’re trying to rush out the door, right?

Your body is most likely not going to give you the signal like gently, Hey, we need to go to the bathroom. Right? So I always say in the morning time, if you can have at least 20 to 30 minutes to yourself, that’s really ideal. And then start your day with. It can be warm lemon water, it can be room temperature, cold, whatever you wish, but some sort of water with electrolytes that can really help stimulate things.

so that’s kind of like my morning, routine that I would say is really important. And this falls under the bucket of stress. so when we think about stress, I think a lot of us would say we’re less stressed than we actually are or that our, you know, body feels that we are. And again, I’m only speaking for myself here.

And many of my clients that I work with, I don’t know what, you know, your situation is, whoever’s listening to this, but if we’re really honest with ourself, I think that we put too much on our plates and a large part of this too, is why we feel so bad. We don’t even know that we feel bad because we haven’t.

we haven’t tuned into our body in so long to realize like, Oh wow, things are really off and I’m not okay. You know, and I think part of this is going off topic here for a second, but part of what you mentioned before, we don’t talk with our husband about this. We don’t maybe talk with our girlfriends about it.

It kind of does seem taboo or embarrassing to admit. I think that our life isn’t as great as social media portrays it to be in terms of like the highlight reel, right? Like we all have these struggles and we know if you’ve, you know, seen these memes, listen to your body when it talks before it screams, I would really encourage whoever’s listening today to slow down and just kind of think about how do I really feel?

When was the last time that I pooped? How is my sleep? How is my energy? How is my mood? Like, what are the things that I maybe need to correct so that I can feel better? Because when we feel better about ourselves, we show up better for everybody else in our life. so that I’m just going to go back and circle back here to, you know, managing your stress and starting your day off with, you know, good hydration, but also some sort of like calm so that you’re not racing against the clock.

Because I know when I have those mornings. I feel like the rest of the day, I’m just like an anxiety driven mess. Like heart palpitations feel like I can’t keep up and I’m not going to get everything done. So that I think is really important. So that could be a couple of tips there. but number one, number two is eating hygiene.

So this also falls within this bucket of stress. Are you eating in a rush, right? Eating in a car, eating distracted at your computer. I’m an entrepreneur. I have a big podcast. I have multiple practitioners on my team. We’re, you know, doing all these different projects. Sometimes it can feel impossible to step away, you deserve to step away.

You probably also need it and you’ll be more productive if you do. so step away, take three big breaths. When you are sitting down with your food, actually look at your food. Like be thankful for this food, chew your food. Many people don’t chew their food well enough. I’m going to raise my hand and say I’m guilty of this as well Because it’s hard.

These things are easy. They’re a lot easier said than done, right? It’s hard, right? So eating hygiene is important We have our morning routine. I would call that like pooping hygiene again. So you’re giving yourself some time, you know Get a squatty potty, that could be good too. Hydration, we kind of touched on that.

food quality, we touched on that. I would add here though, to food quality, if you are really constipated, and I have a lot of these tips in my constipation cure guide, which is a free guide you guys can download. add two kiwis a day. That’s been shown in research, to work as an osmotic laxative, which means it’ll pull water into the bowel, help you go to the bathroom.

If you want to do the peel on it, it gives you a little bit more fiber, but I understand texture wise, it’s not so great. You could blend it into a smoothie. You could peel it, put it on a salad, just eat it by itself, whatever. You could also do things like olive oil, MCT oil, prunes, prune juice, a variety of things from a food standpoint, in addition to fiber, those are all listed in the constipation care.

I would say number five is magnesium. So magnesium is a miracle mineral. It is so important for so many different enzymatic functions in the body. And unfortunately with our agriculture and farming practices, you know, and the amount that is in our food today compared to what it was many years ago, We don’t get enough magnesium.

So I personally like, it’s a product from new ethics. That is pros or plus, and it’s a blend of magnesium citrate, which will help pull water into your bowels. It’s an osmotic laxative as well. glycinate, one of the most absorbable forms of magnesium and some vitamin C. So we got some adrenal love, some immune system, love antioxidants here, but it also tastes really good.

I like that product over calm. I used to support calm a lot because that does, it works quickly. You can get it anywhere. It’s easily accessible. Any pharmacy. I just don’t think it tastes super great and I don’t like the way it feels on my stomach. So I’m always very transparent with people. If you need to use it on the go great that can help, you know, alleviate a constipation, but I would do something, you know, that’s tastier and just daily.

if you want to do capsules, you can always do capsules as well. I would do again a blend here because there’s different types of magnesium and we don’t. We don’t solely want to take it for constipation. We really want to have, you know, our cells, be sufficient in magnesium as well. So that would be another recommendation.

And then number six, and this is kind of, you know, over arches, everything is keep a chart and course correct. So again, as females. We might have times in, you know, our cycle where, whether it’s mid cycle, when you’re ovulating or right before your period, you’re getting a surge in hormones, progesterone is peaking and you need a little bit of extra support, or you need more fiber, you need more water, you know, you need to adjust, your diet accordingly, you can do that, but also course correct.

So if this is not getting better, work with someone to get to the root cause there are on my page. I think I have 29 different, potential root causes to constipation. These are just the basics. And I think it’s important to start with the basics because you can go down the functional testing route and waste a whole lot of money, time, energy, and be frustrated when really it comes back to the fact that your body has basic needs and.

We haven’t been consistent with those. So if you get consistent with these things and you know, it’s not improving or you’ve got other symptoms going on, right. Work with someone in a program, address your gut health. Yes. But also look at hormones because hormones can play a massive role. With motility, constipation, all of a bunch of other symptoms.

We don’t have time to touch on today, but you need to course correct. And I mentioned earlier on my story today, someone was saying that they are now intolerant to all different kinds of foods, vegetables, beans, dairy, all the things it will get worse. So I always tell people, you know, when they’re hesitant on getting to the root cause or joining a program, investing in their health, the longer that you wait.

The more dysfunctional the body is going to become and the more effort it’s going to take. And that likely results in more of an investment, right, because you’re going to spend more time and more money trying to correct things because we didn’t listen early on. 

Ruth Soukup: Right. Such good advice. Wow. So many things.

And I feel like we could keep talking about poop forever. But, if people want to learn more about poop from the poop queen, where can we find you online? What are you working on right now? Tell us all the things. And then of course, we will link to all of them in our show notes. 

Liz Roman: Yes, absolutely. So I am on Instagram at the Poop Queen.

That is my most active platform. I am on other platforms, as well. We do have a Top 1% podcast, a health revival show. So we have over 750 episodes now of all things women’s health, functional health, hormones, training, mom, life, entrepreneurship, all of that. I do have the Free Constipation Cure Guide, as I mentioned.

So I’ll give you a link for that. Fitmomlife. com backslash Liz. and you can download the constipation cure there. I do have a kid’s constipation cure. If that is something your kiddos are struggling with, it’s of course, much different than the adult constipation cure. And what am I working on? Gosh, 2025 is going to be.

Full of projects. and right now we’re just working on creating some different, things that are going to go into a book. So I just wrote a 38 page bloating guide that we’re going to be releasing soon because talking a little bit about hormones here beyond the guts. So many things that can impact, bloating, and we’re going to be doing some business mentorship this year, traveling and speaking.

So just a lot on deck, but, most importantly, you know, always thinking about how we can serve people and help women who have. Unfortunately not been helped by the healthcare system that we have here in the U. S. 

Ruth Soukup: For sure. For sure. And I love it. And you just had a baby. And I just had a baby, yes. He’ll be five weeks old, so.

Oh, that makes my, that makes my ovaries hurt. Even now. I don’t want another baby, but I want to have a baby. How many children do you have? I have two. Two teenagers. Two girls. So, yeah, and everybody, when we had little girls, everybody said, oh, just wait till they’re teenagers. And everybody was right. , 

Liz Roman: yes. everybody was right.

Teenage girls. I really wanted a girl and now I’m like very happy with being a boy mom and already labeling myself as a soccer mom, but I, I just. and I have to say he’s only five and a half and I’ve turned to my husband at least a handful of times and said, we’re going to be in for quite a ride when he’s, I don’t know what’s, you know, I know girls have their things, boys have their things, but, I think they all do, but it’s worth it.

Ruth Soukup: It’s worth it. So congratulations to you. And this was amazing. Thank you so much for all the amazing information. And like I said, we will share all of the links, then everything that you mentioned in our show notes and yeah, I just poop. Well. 

Liz Roman: Thank you so much, Ruth. 

Get Liz’s FREE Constipation Cure Guide: https://fitmomlife.com/liz
Find her at her website: https://fitmomlife.com/
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepoopqueen/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poopqueen
Or on her Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-health-revival-show/id1492747637