Good Sh*t

Introduction: Let's Talk Sh*t

It s time to have an honest conversation about poop.
     Western societies are obsessed with what we put into our bodies. In the eighties, nineties, and early aughts it was all about fat-free, sugar-free, and carb-free diets. These were geared toward weight loss, even if they tried to maintain an illusion of health. Though fad diets haven t gone away, we ve gotten wiser as we ve learned more about the gut and its relationship to our overall health.
     In recent years, our attention has shifted toward the quality of our food and achieving balance in our diets. We ve learned that what we eat impacts our gut, which impacts our brain as well as our waistline, which impacts how we feel mentally and physically. We ve also learned that food, in combination with sleep, stress, and other lifestyle factors, can have a big effect on our inflammation levels, which can set off an epidemiological chain reaction. Basically, our gut health is the key to everything.
     But how can we tell if our gut is healthy? That s where poop and the philosophy of Good Sh*t comes in.
     Poop is the most consistently reliable barometer of your overall health. The problem is that many of us were raised to do our business and flush the toilet as quickly as possible. That s like deleting text messages without reading them. Our gut sends us regular reports about our health, but if we don t read them because of shame or don t know how to read them out of ignorance then we re doing ourselves a disservice.
     We understand the discomfort. Many Western societies have constructed a range of taboos on the subject of poop. If someone asks you how you re feeling, it s unlikely that you d brag, I ve had a fantastic poop every morning for a week thanks for asking! But a week of good morning poops is a big victory! You might feel more comfortable telling your friends that you re feeling

Julia Blohberger and Roos Neeter are full-time yoga teachers and trained practitioners of Ayurveda, which emphasizes holistic healthcare. Blohberger is also an Ayurvedic health and lifestyle advisor and the author of Simply (2020), a vegan Ayurvedic e-cookbook. Neeter released a Dutch-language album on vaginas (2019). Blohberger lives in Amsterdam and Neeter lives in The Hague.

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