How does it work that we eat few times a day, but usually we poop only once?

Is the colon somehow programmed to buffer the waste until the time is up and then dumps it all further?

Got this thought when observing my dog who eats twice a day (morning and evening) and more or less poops twice a day (morning and evening).

  • De_Narm@lemmy.world
    40·
    6 months ago

    Everything from 3 times a day to once every 3 days is normal. It depends on how much you eat, how much of it your body can absorb, your fiber intake and some genetic variance too.

    Your intestines aren’t a conveyor belt, things don’t constantly move. There are multiple muscles acting as a valve between different sections. Based on the factors above your body decides when to push stuff to the next section including the exit.

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
    28·
    6 months ago

    I don’t usually eat more than once or maybe twice a day but often still take more than one shit.

    Everyone’s bowels are bitty different.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    28·
    6 months ago

    Who is “we”? Speak for yourself, I usually poop after most meals; if I’ve eaten a lot or very spicy or fatty things, I might even poop more than once for the same meal.

  • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    181·
    6 months ago

    How much you poop is going to vary based both on your body and your diet. Ive read anywhere from 3 times a day to once every 3 days can be normal.

    • scala@lemmy.ml
      21·
      6 months ago

      This 2-4 times a day means you have a healthy digestive track. Anything less than once a day is cause for concern.

  • rekabis@lemmy.ca
    181·
    6 months ago

    The rectum is considerably larger than your mouth, and can hold a lot more shit.

  • gigachad@sh.itjust.works
    16·
    6 months ago

    Maybe you poop only once. Everything between three times a day and every three days is in the normal range. If you find yourself within this range, congratulations, you are a boring pooper.

  • MTK@lemmy.world
    12·
    6 months ago

    Science time!

    Fast for 24 hours then use an anal douche. This should completely clear your digestive track.

    Now eat for the next 24 hours while measuring everything you eat. Every time you poop make sure to measure it, either my measuring the poop directly (poop in a bowl?) Or by measuring the difference in weight after you poop (be sure to first pee as to not measure liquids)

    Now fast for another 24 hours while continuing to measure your poop. By the end of it you should have to total weight you eat and the total weight you pooped. For most foods you can probably reduce the weight by half to account for liquids (most will be pee, some will be in your poop, this will depend on the liquidness of your poop)

    Now you will probably notice a few things:

    1. you poop a lot less mass than you consume, this is because you turn a lot of it into energy.

    2. there is a lot of water in food

    3. you probably poop more than you think (one dump can be quite big in comparison to a meal when removing liquids)

    Enjoy!

  • Berttheduck@lemmy.ml
    7·
    6 months ago

    Humans have a really good digestive tract for getting nutrients out of food. So you take a lot of the mass of the food you eat and use it in your body as energy or building material. As such your poop has significantly smaller mass because it’s made up of all the stuff you’re body can’t use after it’s pulled out so the good bits.

    As for dogs my understanding is they have a shorter digestive tract to allow them to eat the nasty stuff does seem to like without getting sick so they are probably less efficient at removing nutrients and poop more proportionally to what they eat.

  • cooljimy84@lemmy.world
    4·
    6 months ago

    So my kids poop 1-2 times a day, normally lunch time then evening time.

    My partner is once a day.

    I’m more like 2-3 times a day, normally morning and then just before bedtime.