Enjoy bean soups or burritos, or snack on low-fat chips with bean dip. Banish the binders . Limit your consumption of bananas, cheeses, white rice, applesauce, and white flour products. Drink plenty of nonalcoholic liquids, the Graedons advise. Liquids are natural stool softeners.
Soft stools pass more easily than hard ones.
A good drink to get things moving, Dr. Simons says, is coffee. Its caffeine stimulates not only wakefulness, but the colon as well. Tea, cocoa, and colas also contain enough caffeine to help, but chocolate probably does not. Make it a habit . In addition to diet problems, constipation often results from bad toilet habits.