Pooping is a part of weight loss. If your not pooping, food sits around fermenting, and that gives you gas and bloating. This toxic accumulation will get pushed out into the outlying tissues making you plump up. This is what we know as damp in Chinese Medicine.
We love rhubarb in TCM. We call it Da Huang and use it as a herb to tone up intestines, scraping them clean. It’s a tasty laxitive gentle enough for children. Rhubarb falls under bitter foods category which sometimes this isn’t a litteral taste, more so the effect. These foods reduce excesses such as heat (firey temper, red face, booming loud voice), accumulations (such as the ones you get in bowels) and move blood stasis (which manifests as fixed pain). Because of the strong effect, do not overuse. Anyone who feels cold a lot should use Rhubarb in moderation, for it has a strong cooling effect on the body.

Here I’m enjoying orange blossom stewed rhubarb with my morning porridge.