Hi,

Thanks for getting in touch.

I'm sorry to hear of your recent discomfort. It can be quite common to experience some constipation when trying to lose weight due to the reduction of food in our diet - which results in less bulk. I can see you have been using the service for some time, but have you made any significant changes to your diet in the past few weeks which could have had this impact, for example reducing your intake further or changing the types of foods you're eating?

As you have identified, fibre is very important in our diet and in helping to reduce the occurrence of constipation. You should be aiming for at least 18g but ideally 30g of fibre in your diet each day. However increasing your fibre intake suddenly can actually worsen your constipation, so it's best to increase your intake gradually.

Having a very fatty meal is unlikely to help with your symptoms, and actually if you've been eating more low fat foods recently, having a big fatty meal will probably cause you quite a bit of discomfort. The best thing to do is to focus on your fibre intake for now, to see if this helps.

Looking at your diary you appear to have increased your intake of fruits and vegetables, but you're not currently eating many wholegrains. To explain there are two different types of fibre - soluble and insoluble - and it's important to have a good balance of both in our diet. Soluble fibre is found in things like fruits, oats and root vegetables. Insoluble fibre is found in things like Wholemeal bread, cereals and nuts. From your diary it seems your intake of insoluble fibre is a little low so it may be worth trying to increase your intake of foods containing this type of fibre.

As mentioned, you should increase your fibre gradually, so I would recommend adding 1-2 high fibre foods to your diet each week for the next few weeks and see how you get on. Great choices are:

•     Fruits and vegetables where you eat the skin

•     Wholemeal bread

•     Wholegrain pasta

•     Wholegrain rice

•     Quinoa

•     Oats

•     Cereals such as weetabix, bran flakes, all bran and shredded wheat

•     Nuts and seeds

These are all very healthy foods, and should not break the calorie bank. If you include them as part of your main meals and snacks, they should not have a negative impact on your calorie intake.

The other important thing is your fluid intake. If you are eating lots of fibre but not drinking enough water, this can make it harder to pass stools. Aim for at least 2 litres of fluid per day. This can come from water, milk, tea, coffee, no added sugar fruit squash and juice.

Increasing your exercise is also a good way to help ease constipation - a walk or gentle jog can be very helpful in getting things moving.

I hope this helps to give you some things to try. If this issue continues for the next week or two without improvement, it may be worth a chat with your GP to see if there is anything they can recommend.

Kind regards

Emma

Nutracheck Nutritionist (ANutr)