Drink More Water
Staying hydrated keeps your body healthy. Even if you don't exercise that much, you should be drinking lots of water. But if you work out, you should be drinking even MORE water. Athletes that stay hydrated will improve your sports performance. Drinking water may even help you burn more fat! Do you know how much water you should be drinking? Keep reading to learn how much and why you would be drinking more water.
Dehydration
Dehydration is defined as a loss of water that equals to 1% or more of your body weight. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, sweating out 1.5 pounds of water will put you in dehydration mode. Therefore, if you sweat when you work out or play sports, you may become easily dehydrated if you are not properly hydrated.
Almost all of us wake up in a state of dehydration. When we wake up, our urine is yellow and smelly. That is not a good thing. You know you have reached proper hydration when your urine is odorless and almost clear. So start drinking water as soon as you wake up! I start every morning with water followed shortly thereafter by a breakfast with at least 30 grams of protein.
Do you know how much protein your body needs? Click the image below to find an easy way to calculate your macros.
Burning Fat
Your body can burn fat more efficiently when you are properly hydrated. Thornton (2016) noted that properly hydrated subjects lost more fat than dehydrated subjects. He hypothesized that this weight loss occurred with two mechanisms: (1) increased hydration suppressed appetites, and (2) increased hydration increased lipolysis.
With properly hydrated cells, your body burns energy more efficiently, which is to say it draws more energy from fat instead of carbs and protein. More fat loss, and less muscle loss, is also great for your metabolism because muscle burns more calories than fat. Besides drinking more water, there are five more things you can do to increase your metabolism. In fact, you can watch our metabolism video by clicking the image below.
Physical Performance
If you're working out, you're going to want to stay hydrated. Many studies have shown that dehydration will impair your ability to perform at your best. Performance levels start to decline immediately, but, there's a drastic drop at 2% dehydration. Kleiner (1999) reviewed many studies in which subjects experienced a 20% drop in performance after a 2% drop in water weight. This drop in performance could be during a sporting event or during a routine workout at your gym. Either way, you'll want to stay hydrated to make sure you don't have a decline in performance.
And if you want to learn more about exercise science and sports nutrition, click the image below to review our classes.
Mental Performance
Furthermore, the decline in mental performance has also been documented by several studies. Gopinathan et al. (1988) showed a decrease in brain power begins to happen almost immediately, but takes a significant drop at 2% dehydration level. The subjects in the study had trouble with simple math, short-term memory, and visual tracing after just 2% dehydration. Things got even worse as their dehydration levels continued to worsen. This lapse in mental performance could be crucial in a late game situation when good decisions are pertinent to a good outcome. Stay hydrated to perform at your best!
And if you need more help to perform at your best, click on the image below for more info on personal training.
Disease and Kidney Stones
Moreover, the review by Kleiner (1999) showed a decreased incidence in certain cancers such as bladder, prostate, and kidney, for those subjects that stayed hydrated most of the time. The review also showed a decrease in kidney stones for properly hydrated subjects.
Therefore, even if you don’t exercise much, staying hydrated will keep you healthier than those that don’t drink enough water. You can begin by drinking at least 3 liters per day. These days, you can definitely find a water bottle to help with your water consumption. However, if you exercise, especially outdoors, you may need more water. Remember the urine test. Your daily goal is colorless, odorless, urine as quickly as possible.
Furthermore, you don't have to get all your water from liquid. There are plenty of fruits that can help with water consumption. One of my favorites, especially in the summer, is watermelon. Watermelon can also be a great pre-workout snack because of some of its ingredients. Click on the image below to read more about all the health benefits of watermelon.
Muscle Cramps
When and why do they happen? Muscle cramps come at the worse time and we're not exactly sure what causes them. But, we are certain that being properly hydrated can prevent, or at least delay the onset of exercise induced muscle cramping. A study by Jung et al. (2005) showed that muscle cramping could be delayed with the consumption of water and electrolytes during exercise. In the study, the subjects who drank water and electrolytes, delayed or prevented cramps, while the dehydrated subjects cramped much earlier. If you are working out, especially in the heat, make sure you remain properly hydrated.
As a reminder, sports drinks are a combination of water, sugar, and electrolytes. In case you are wondering, electrolytes is just a fancy word for salt. I would recommend sports drinks after 30 to 60 minutes of hard exercise, especially if you are sweating excessively.
When I work out, I usually have a sports drink ready to go. I will sip on a sports drink when I play golf, perform high intensity intervals, or even when I work out hard in the gym. Speaking of working out in the gym, we created several exercise videos to help you out. Click the image below to watch some of my favorite exercises for LEG DAY.
Sweating
So if staying hydrated is so important, then you may be wondering why our bodies sweat so much. Basically, our bodies try to maintain a constant temperature of about 98.6 degrees. When we get too hot, our bodies try to cool down by removing heat through sweat. The longer you work out, the more your body will continue to cool down by sweating.
Unfortunately, losing a lot of water through sweat does NOT mean we are losing weight properly. Wearing a sweatsuit and refusing to drink water is NOT a good idea. Your workouts will suffer and your weight loss will only be water loss. Instead, drink plenty of water and work out hard, so that your body will burn more fat throughout the day. I always say, work out as hard as you can for one hour. You can lose weight and burn fat the other 23 hours of the day.
But if losing weight is your #1 goal, we've listed our top 10 weight loss tips in a different article. Click on the image below to get more tips on losing weight.
Knowledge is Power
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Summary
Although most of us drink water throughout the day, the truth is, most of us don't drink enough. We wake up each morning in a dehydrated state, so we need to start each day with at least 1 glass of water, especially before our cup of coffee. By the end of the day, we should all drink at least 3 liters of water. If you are working out outdoors and sweating profusely, you may need up to 10 liters of water. In easy trick to remember is, drink 1 pint of water for every pound of water loss during your workout. Stay cool, drink plenty of water, and keep moving!! Happy health and happy training!
Written By
RAescobar, PFTA instructor and personal trainer
Sources:
Kleiner, Susan M. Water: An Essential but Overlooked Nutrient. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Volume 99: Number 2. 1999.
Gopinathan, PM; G. Pichan; V.M. Sharma. Role of Dehydration in heat stress-induced variations in mental performance. Archives of Environmental Health. 1988; 43:15-17.
Jung, Alan P.; Phillip A. Bishop; Ali Al-Nawwas; R. Barry Dale. Influence of Hydration and Electrolyte Supplementation on Incidence and Time to Onset of Exercise-Associated Muscle Cramps. Journal of Athletic Training (National Athletic Trainers’ Association). Apr-Jun2005, Vol. 40 Issue 2, p71-75.
Thornton, SN. Increased Hydration Can Be Associated with Weight Loss. Frontiers In Nutrition. 2016 Jun 10; Vol. 3, pp. 18.