Remaining consistent with your exercise and nutrition plan, getting a good night’s sleep and managing stress in your life is vital for a successful body transformation but we seem to completely miss the mark when it comes to the most important element of all, hydration. The results are alarming because between 70 and 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated and don’t even know it. These numbers may sound unbelievable, but the truth is it only takes a 3% reduction of water to be dehydrated. The problem is we tend to only drink water when we feel thirsty and thirst is not a good indicator of dehydration for adults. Thirst is very affective for children but as we get older this feedback mechanism deteriorates. When thirst signals triggered as an adult it means we are severely dehydrated. As an adult you must make a mindful effort to stay hydrated without relying on biological signals.
Water loss doesn’t occur only from exercise and sweat. A sedentary person loses over 1 gallon of water in a 24-hour period just from breathing and metabolic processes. These numbers can double or even quadruple for someone who’s physically active. While you sleep for 7 hours in a night you lose a large amount of water and these numbers are higher if you have a high metabolism. This is why you should have water ready to drink as soon as you wake up in the morning.
The many benefits of Staying Properly Hydrated
Water is an excellent appetite suppressant. One problem we experience as adults is often mistaking thirst for hunger, if you’re successfully managing a balanced nutrition program eating 5 to 6 meals a day and still experiencing food cravings, it could be thirst in disguise. Try drinking water before searching for a snack and make drinking water part of your nutrition plan. Unplanned hunger cravings can often cause you to eat the wrong kinds of foods, such as vending machine snacks, a quick ride to a drive through or placing an order for pizza. It’s also very common advice to drink a glass of water before every meal. This is affective for 2 reasons. It helps you stay hydrated if you normally forget to drink water, and water takes up volume in your stomach which helps you avoid overeating during social events or at restaurants where portion sizes tend to be larger and meals are calorie dense.
Staying fully hydrated helps keep your metabolism running at its maximum so that you’re burning more fat 24 hours a day and gives you more energy for your workouts. Your muscles are 70% water so staying fully hydrated helps you maintain your strength so that you’re getting the most from your resistance training workout. Supplement companies make millions of dollars promoting metabolism boosters and appetite suppressants when the same people buying these supplements aren’t making the basic effort to stay hydrated. Staying hydrated can give you the same or better results than these expensive supplements and if you are fully hydrated, chances are these supplements will be in affective. Staying hydrated can possibly increase your strength by up to 19%.
Glycogen is your body’s primary source of fuel and it’s a liquid substance requiring lots of water to be fully restored. It’s a quick burning fuel required for high intensity exercise and if you’re glycogen falls too low for too long without enough water to restore glycogen, your body could catabolize muscle fiber as an alternative quick burning fuel source. Your brain is the biggest consumer of glycogen when you’re at rest. Studies are beginning to prove that Alzheimer’s disease can be caused by chronic dehydration of the brain from not drinking enough water. Drinking water assures that your blood stays clean and clear because more water helps your lymphatic system discard waste faster. This means you’ll be less likely to catch colds, your immune system will be more affective and bacterial infection will less likely to take hold and cause problems.
Hot Water vs Cold Water
You often hear people say if it tastes good it must be bad for you. Cold water is one of the exceptions to this rule because cold water taste better than warm water and offers some health benefits. It keeps your core temperature low during high intensity exercise and your body absorbs cold water faster. The low temperature of water helps you regulate your core temperature during exercise so you can push yourself harder. The big misunderstanding with cold water is people try to take the calorie affects to its extremes. Cold water may have calorie burning benefits but those calories are very small compared to diet and exercise. Drinking gallon after gallon of cold water could cause hyponatremia from a loss of electrolytes.
Most people think too much water weight is caused by drinking too much water but in actuality the opposite is true. Your body treats water the same way it treats calories. When you’re not getting enough water, it treats it like gold and doesn’t like to waste it too often. Your hormones will shift and start to retain water and more water than usual is absorbed from food. This extra water retention causes you to be more bloated and evidence is typically seen in your face, your hands and your feet. Drinking more water can make you lose weight quickly because your body release stored water and results can seem like lots of fat was quickly lost.
How to Properly Hydrate Your Body
At the beginning of this article I mentioned that 70 to 75% of Americans are seriously dehydrated and don’t know it. The problem is most hydration conscious people rehydrate incorrectly. Nature has given us the perfect system to determine if we are fully hydrated and you can’t fully hydrate your body by drinking a gallon of water at once and thinking everything will be okay for the rest of the day. Rehydration begins with always drinking water as soon as you wake up before eating breakfast. Many metabolic processes happen during your sleep and these processes use up a lot of water. Even if you are dehydrated your body is not a sponge so you must drink water gradually and give yourself to absorb it with making multiple trips to the bathroom. Drink until satisfaction is met and once you feel that you must force yourself to keep drinking, you’ve had enough. There are many references that try to tell us how much water we should drink but everyone is different, and we all have different variables in our lives.
The urine test is the best way to determine if you’re fully hydrated. If the color of your water is dark yellow or orange, you need to drink more water. Certain medications are an exception to this rule and this is something you’d need to discuss with your physician. The color of your urine should be clear or straw colored.
Once you’re fully hydrated you should drink enough water to make sure you’re going to the bathroom every 1 to 2 hours. If you’re not going to the restroom at least once every 2 hours or if your urine gets darker you need to drink more water. Don’t make the mistake of trying to fully hydrate yourself as soon as you arrive at the gym. It’s so common for me to see fellow gym members with 1 gallon water jugs of water while they exercise. The hydration process begins 2 to 4 hours before arriving at the gym. To give your body time to absorb water into your blood stream so that you’ll have an affective workout. This may be a small challenge if you exercise in the morning. This is another reason why you must drink water immediately after waking up.
How To Make Water Taste Better
If you’re not used to regularly drinking water throughout the day or if your taste buds are still hooked on juices and sodas, there are some things you can do to make water taste better. Lots of people find water more fun to drink by squeezing some lemon juice or mint in the bottle. A few drops of mint oil is more than enough to make water have a more refreshing taste. I personally don’t like adding flavor to my water because I drink so much water that trying to always flavor it can become bothersome. Ice cold water us usually enough for me and it helps me wean myself from sugary drinks much faster. Lots of people find water much easier to drink by simply drinking it in a glass bottle instead of plastic or sports containers.
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