If we eat three meals a day, why do we poop only once?

I'm no poopologist, but I'll give it a shot!

Your output, is incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, dependent on your input.

People who eat a strict carnivore diet, famously, have very little and infrequent poops.

People who have a fiber-rich diet, and eat spicy food, think about curries, have frequent and powerful poops.

People who eat a lot of fat, more fat than they can process, will have more fatty poops. In fact, this is one way to determine if you are eating enough fat in your diet, if your poop is dry and clumpy, you need more fat. If your poop is fatty, you need less fat

All of this is also moderated by your gut biome, whether it's changing or fed. If you make any serious diet changes, you can expect an odd pooping schedule for the first week or two. Until your gut biome completely adjusts. I've seen a paper where it indicates total gut biome adjustment to a radically new diet can take up to 9 months

A lot of modern processed food, in order to try to be "healthier", is difficult, or not impossible, for the body to process. That means it goes from the input to the output very quickly. Lower transit time, is healthier because you're absorbing less of the nutrients when you're eating a bad diet, but it means more poop

On the whole: fat, and protein, are almost totally absorbed by the stomach. Grains, carbohydrates, fiber, anything from a plant, The domain of the intestine... And since these are not perfectly absorbed, they have more outputs.

Fun fact, poop is brownish, because that is your old blood cells getting removed!!!

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.

Speak for yourself. I've pooped three times before I'm even out of the house.

...You poop only once?

Cuz we're generally more full of shit than we like to admit.

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.

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.

Yes, your colon is a poop buffer.

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.

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.

I'm 2-3 times a day. it was 5+ until we figured out my body hates gluten

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

no poop knife for this guy, amiright?!

Once a day? Hahahaha

That would save me a lot of time!

Once a day? You're not eating enough fiber.

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!

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.

Maybe you poop only once.

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.

Because we store poo for later shits

Just wanted to point out that the colon is LIFO and not FIFO FIFO and not LIFO wow I need more caffeine

Just poop while you eat to save time

I would guess (without knowing for sure) that it's because your body absorbs a part of the food, so you poop out less mass than you eat.

It is healthier to do it more often.

Because we are taught by society to not poop at work.

Naturally we poop way more often, and naturally we ate more often too.