Howdy Beautiful People,

I was out shoveling my driveway and roof this weekend for a few hours and realized I was surrounded by water and had none to drink. I could feel that I was sweating, and it made me think how many people would be doing the same thing and not realize they need to replenish afterwards. Here is my water guide to drinking the right amount of water,I hope you all enjoy.

The Water Guide

It’s no secret that our bodies are mostly water 60-65% of our bodies are water, (got doing a quick search on the web). But how much do we need on any given day to maintain healthy function? That will depend on your body weight, activity level how humidity of your environment, temperature of your environment and temperature of your body.

The easiest and simplest way to make sure you are drinking enough water is to get in the habit of carrying a water bottle everywhere you go. Having a water bottle with you eliminates the need to keep track how much water you drank. Now you can just take a sip any time you think about it, just interpret “thinking about water” as your body telling you its time to drink more water. Along with carrying a water bottle with you if you also get in the practice of drinking a glass of water any time you have a diuretic, (ie coffee, alcohol, some prescription drugs) or any time your working out/ sweating (ie the gym, skiing, hiking, at a concert, doing yard work,…) you will be just fine.

A simple estimate for how much water you should be drinking in a day is 1 gallon for men or 3/4 a gallon for woman. If you are not in the practice of drinking healthy amounts of water then bringing a gallon jug of water with you is a great idea. As the day goes on you can see how much you have to finish before the end of the day, which hopefully will motivate you to drink more, this will provide you with great insight as to how much water you should get, and can probably transition to a more life friendly bottle after a few days.

If you’re looking for a formula that is a little more involved, here is one recommended by the Poliquin Group

(Body weight in pounds/2) + (body weight x 20%) = number of ounces per day.

For example:

140 lb/2 = 70

20% of 140 = 28

70 + 28 = 98 oz/day

I also don’t know why they make it so complicated, Here is the same formula but rewritten by someone with a degree in Math.

(BW/2) + (BW x 20%) = Number of ounces per day,

(BW x 1/2) + (BW x 2/10) = OPD,

BW(1/2 + 2/10) = OPD,

BW(7/10) = OPD,

Body weight x 70% = Number of ounces per day

For example:

140 lbs x 70% = 98 oz/day

*keep in mind the is a formula that doesn’t involve humidity level or activity level so even this fairly involved formula is just a rough estimate.

Drinking water at work:

For those of you who have a desk job you may or may not have heard that sitting at a desk for long periods of time is not conducive for better health. Well if you have a water bottle with you at work and are good about drinking it you will have to take frequent breaks from your desk to use that restroom and to fill up your water bottle. So you could have a standing desk or set a timer to walk around your office every fifteen minutes or… you could just carry a water bottle with you.

Drinking water and fat loss:

When the body perceives that you are in a drought it will start to ration the water that is available. This is the same pattern the body takes if you are restricting calories, in extreme temperatures, excessive exercise or basically any extreme stress that your body perceives is a threat to life. The body naturally redirects it’s resources to where it is needed right now and ignores demands that are farther down the road. What the body says to it’s self is ‘who cares if my organs fatigue in 5 years I don’t have enough water to make it to tomorrow.’

When your body senses that water is low it will send signals to shut down kidneys functions. In the short term this isn’t a problem because the liver can then take over the kidneys, this really becomes a problem long term when the liver can’t do the other jobs we would like it to perform. What are those other jobs?

Detoxification and Fat processing

The liver removes toxins from the blood stream to be pooped out later and turns triglycerides (body fat) into glucose which is how the body fuels energy demands. If you think how these liver functions pertain to water intake it becomes pretty clear that you need your liver the most when we are socially least like to give it what it needs.

This explains why drinking a glass of water after every alcoholic beverage goes so a long way to helping your hangover the next day. If you didn’t do that then your liver wouldn’t be operating at 100% when you need it to remove that toxic crap from all those poisonous beverages. What? you didn’t know that alcohol was poison? Haven’t you ever heard a bartender ask, “pick your poison”

Now switch to the gym and suddenly could explain why I hear stories of people who have plateau’d and are not seeing any results when they are forgetting to drink water. If you are on the boarder of being dehydrated then start a training session to work of body fat (the better the activity the more you are to sweat) you become really dehydrated really quickly. That combination of water restriction and physical activity will stop all fat loss in its tracks. Then when you realize that because the liver is not firing on all cylinders your body might be switching to a different source for fuel, Your Muscles!!! Or this could explain why going to the gym seems to suck the life out of some people while so many others it seems to help boost their energy.

Signs or symptoms of dehydration

Increased thirst
Dry mouth
Decreased Urine output
Tired or sleepy
Urine is low volume and more yellowish then normal
Headache
Dry Skin
Dizziness

While these symptoms don’t seem sever I really urge you that they are. Lets take the symptom of the headache, seems fairly common. But when you realize that your brain doesn’t have any pain receptors like lets say your foot does (which will notice everything you step on). Then you might start to realize that if you are experiencing even just the mildest of headaches due to dehydration then you are seriously dehydrated. Same goes for all the rest of the symptoms.

What can you expect when you are hydrated

Clear Urine
Plenty of volume to your urine
Better energy levels
Better metabolism
Better recovery
Better sleep
Basically your body works the way it’s supposed

Drink your water from glass bottles whenever possible to avoid any chemicals that could leach into it from plastic bottles. This is why you will see me with a recycled glass bottle (that and I think it looks cool).

If you are drinking bottled water (which is a great way to remove toxins if you don’t have a reverse osmosis filter) then you should avoid the water that comes in the soft plastic containers. A soft plastic containers are the opaque containers that you will see milk sold in. Look for the clear hard plastic to get less contaminants in you water.

Ciao,

Jerry

My good friend Jerry asked if I would be willing to write a blog post for his new site, Labonte Nutrition. He wanted me to give a little piece of nutritional wisdom to the ladies that a man couldn’t. How could I turn down an offer like that?!

Over the past three years, I have had the pleasure of working with a wide range of women from all walks of life to help them dial in their nutrition plans. Do you know that one thing that every single one of them was missing from their diet?

SATISFACTION!

That seems crazy, right? Who would ever put the words “diet” and “satisfaction” into the same sentence?

But here is the deal, in order for any nutritional strategy to work, it has to be satisfying. For a lot of the women I work with, they feel an immense amount of guilt or shame about the foods they find pleasurable. It is almost as if there is a big seperation between the foods that are “good for you” and the ones that “taste good”. A lot of women don’t even know what foods are satisfying to them, because they have trained themselves for so long to not feel pleasure from the food they eat.

So ladies, lets imagine this. Lets talk about your sex life. If you never tried new things, if you never allowed yourself to break out of missionary, if you never tried having sex in the morning over the bathroom sink, how would you ever know if you liked it? How would you know what blows your skirt up?

Now lets come back to food. If you never tried new foods, if you never allowed yourself to break out of your low-fat low-carb low-calorie way of eating, if you never tried eating coffee ice cream in the bath tub, how would you ever know if you liked it? How would you know what blows your skirt up?

The truth is, we are hard wired to derive A LOT of pleasure from the food we eat. And as women, we are very particular. We like things to be a certain way. We like it “just like that” or “mmmmmmm a little more of that” or “just a little slower” or “just a little more”.

For men, it’s different right? They don’t care if it is right here or there or everywhere, they are just happy to be getting it! For them, food is food and sex is sex. For us, it’s not quite that way. We need a few more specifics to be satisfied. We like things to be just to our taste, and to feel just right.

So, who’s responsibility is it for you to feel satisfied?

YOURS!

If you do not know what you like, what your preferences are, it is impossible for you to scratch that satisfaction itch. You need to spend some time finding out what brings you pleasure (in all areas of your life, not just food and sex) otherwise you are doomed to always feel as if, “things just don’t taste right…”

Now how’s THAT for a nutritional strategy 😉

My recommendation for you this week is to get curious as to what brings you pleasure and satisfaction. Is it a poached egg breakfast at nine o’clock with a cup of black coffee? Is it a rare steak with grilled asparagus for dinner? Is it a bottle of Malbec shared with someone good looking sitting on the deck at night? What is it? With all the nitty gritty details?

Once you’ve identified that, once you have figured out what it is you REALLY want, I would ask, “Are you getting it?”

Here’s to getting what you want, ladies. You deserve it :)

Heather Kelly is an evolutionary sports nutritionist and certified psychology of eating coach. She is the owner and operator of OPENutrition and Heather’s Choice. Heather works with clients worldwide to help them develop a relationship with food that leaves them feeling SEXY. STRONG. and SATISFIED. She is the creator of mydietissexy.com and the OPENutrition Challenge. Heather is available for one on one and group coaching, as well as live speaking engagements. You can get in touch with her by visiting OPENutrition.com.

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