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I had to drink lots of water after my kidney stone, trying to find out how much more I could consume on a daily basis before my tissues rose up in bloated rebellion. The doctor wanted me to drink as much as possible, but warned against drinking so much that I got disgusted and quit. The point was to drink as much as possible every day, so my new water habit had to remain (barely) within tolerable limits.

After my intestinal problems, I am now on a similar assignment for fiber, probing the limits of my tolerance for fiber-rich foods. I’m eating a bit more fruits and vegetables, but not a lot more; I ate fruit before, and I still don’t like vegetables. I’ve switched from white bread to whole wheat, which can be good but often high in saturated fats, and even to a “double bran” wheat loaf, which is low in fats but merely edible.

The kind of the fiber-rich diet, however, is All-Bran cereal. It’s amazing stuff. One half cup contains 50% of your daily needs, more than a dose of Metamucil. It fails to work as breakfast cereal; it turns to wet cardboard the instant milk touches it. Instead, I take it in big pinches for my breakfast, along with a big mug of sugary tea or a very sweet, very milky, very weak coffee. A big mug is necessary, because the stuff is awful. It looks and feels like gerbil food. It tastes like gerbil food, too, with just enough sugar to let you choke it down. High-fructose corn syrup is the second ingredient, which means the cereal saves my intestines at the expense of my pancreas.

To its credit, the packaging doesn’t even insult you by denying the fact that you’re eating something basically unpleasant and medicinal. Nowhere do the words “delicious” or “yummy” appear on the box; “tasty” appears only once, in tiny, low-contrast print, at the very bottom. The back of the box gets right down to a list of suggestions for making it more tolerable: try adding fruit, it suggests, or baking it into muffins. (A tacit acknowledgement that All-Bran is incompatible with milk.) Dress up your food by slipping it into salads or somewhere else you might not notice it. I found myself wondering why they didn’t add “try to make a game out of it—measure how much bran you eat, and try to beat your last record!”

To be fair, it does the job. If my dinner the night before was too rich, or too spicy, or eaten too late, or otherwise upsetting to the tum-tum, a half cup of All-Bran takes care of it, making me feel better well before getting to actual pooping. It works on both constipation and diarrhea. Even better, it handles mild and severe cases with equal facility; typically, treatments strong enough for severe cases of whatever hurl you too far in the opposite direction when applied to a mild case. The gastroenterologist warned me to stay hydrated, because bran without enough water will plug you right up, but as long as you stay hydrated (and I do, after that kidney stone), bran seems to be an intestinal cure-all. None too tasty, perhaps, but still more palatable than Pepto-Bismol and probably a lot better for you in regular use.

If anything, it works too well. I’ve noticed that my body seems to have grown dependent. On mornings after dinners when I have not eaten rich, spicy, late, or excessive foods—which is most mornings—I may be more in the mood for a bagel with a bit of peanut butter and jam, or a competing cereal, or a dab of leftovers. These foods never caused me trouble before. Suddenly, I find myself with an ishy feeling after breakfasting on harmless food, as if my gut is rejecting anything but the bran it loves and my sensory organs despise.

I worry I may need to launch a third regimen, to find out how little bran I can live with.