The same additional gas is what can make you feel bloated when you begin a fibrous diet, she adds, so if you’re often experiencing that sensation of needing to fart (or actually tooting up a storm) and you’re popping out floaters, fiber may certainly be the culprit. You don’t want to cut it out, though—fiber is, again, a great thing for gut health and can help keep you regular. The key is just to increase your intake gradually and be sure to drink plenty of water as you’re doing so, because fiber needs liquid to move things along smoothly.
2. Your body isn’t absorbing fat well.
Similar to gas, extra fat in your poops will decrease their density, sometimes enough to leave them bobbing (think about how oil floats on water). In this case, though, you’d likely notice that your poops look greasy, too, or pop out along with droplets of oil, “almost as if you poured some into the toilet,” Dr. Grant says. These fatty poops (a.k.a. steatorrhea) also tend to stick to the sides of the bowl when you flush, Dr. Schnoll-Sussbaum says.
As for what causes the shitty fat buildup in the first place? You could just have a super high-fat diet to the point where your body isn’t able to take it all in, and some of it’s pouring over into your poops, Dr. Schnoll-Sussbaum says. But it’s also possible that your GI system is struggling to absorb the fat you’re eating (even if it’s not a lot) because of an issue with one of the organs required for that process, she says, like your liver or pancreas.
Basically, bile released by the liver and the enzyme lipase secreted by the pancreas work in tandem to help you break down fats—so anything messing with the creation of either substance or its ability to reach food in your GI system can leave you with extra fat in your poop, Dr. Schnoll-Sussbaum says. That includes gallstones (which can block the flow of these chemicals), as well as liver disease and chronic pancreatitis, in rarer cases. Similarly, Crohn’s, an inflammatory condition, can also leave you with fattier floating poops because it causes swelling in the part of the small intestine where bile does most of its work on fat.
But in the case of any of the above conditions, you’d almost definitely catch other red flags beyond the floaters, like deep abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, fever, and loss of appetite, for starters (more on when to see a doctor below).
3. You’re fighting a gut infection.
A pathogen setting up shop in your stomach can certainly mess with your digestion and leave you with floating poops (among other things, like diarrhea, vomiting, and belly pain).
The most popular bacterial culprits, like Escherichia coli (a.k.a. E. coli) and Salmonella, are most likely to trigger goopy or liquid-y poops. But Dr. Schnoll-Sussbaum says that infection with the common parasite Giardia, or giardiasis, often turns up floaters because this microbe can interfere with your ability to absorb nutrients, including fats—leaving all that grease running into your poops.
4. You have a functional GI condition, like IBS.
It’s possible that your digestion is discombobulated because of a disconnect between your gut and your brain (rather than anything chemical or structural happening in your body). The result is a condition like irritable bowel syndrome or functional dyspepsia (a.k.a. indigestion), both of which can involve unpredictable spasms of your intestines, generating gas, bloating, and yes, airier poops, Dr. Schnoll-Sussbaum says. Indeed, a 2015 study found that floaters are characteristic of mixed IBS (i.e. alternating constipation and diarrhea) in particular.