Hydration for your health
In this blog I break down why looking at your hydration can be the key to helping you solve your energy feelings and feelings of tiredness.
Maintaining good hydration is often forgotten about and something that many of us don’t really pay that much attention too.
Water plays a key role in many different bodily functions:
Dissolve and transports substances
Major component of blood plasma
Protect and lubricate tissues
First line of defence in our immunity.
Often when we think of hydration we mostly think of water in, but it is actually a daily balance of fluids going in and out of our body.
As you will see from the diagram below, there is more than just drink as a mechanism to get fluid into your body.
There are many foods that you can consume that will also help keep your hydrated throughout the day. Some examples include:
⦁ Cucumber
⦁ Lettuce
⦁ Skimmed milk
⦁ Melons such as watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe
⦁ Strawberries
⦁ Pineapple
⦁ Zucchini
⦁ Spinach
⦁ Tomato
There are so many different foods you can eat to increase your daily fluids.
Interestingly your metabolism also provides your body with water through the breakdown of glycogen to glucose.
Glycogen is the bodies stored form of glucose and for every 1g of glucose you body also stores 3g of water. When you body breaks down glycogen it also releases 3 g of water.
This loss of water through the breakdown of glycogen is often the reason why people how go low-carb or keto often lose a few kg’s within the first few weeks- this is the extra water weight they are losing- not fat.
Will water make me lose weight?
The research on this topic is quite limited when it comes to waters impact on your ability to lose weight.
There is one study that found by increasing daily (cold) water intake by an additional 1.5L increase your calories output by approximately 47 kcals. This means that you would have to drink an extra 1.5L of water on top of what you are already drinking to see this small increase in calories burned.
This is the only study to date in humans that supports this increase in calories burned due to an increase in water intake.
There is a lot of hype and clever marketing, that drinking water infused with different fruits or certain “detox waters” will make you lose weight. Do not get drawn in by these marketing ploys and spend your money unnecessarily.
The evidence does not support that increasing water or these water detox drinks will make your burn more fat to lose weight.
This doesn’t mean to say that you should not look at your hydration and ensure you are consuming enough each day.
However, there can be some benefits to consuming enough water from a weight loss perspective as it can help with:
A small suppression of appetite
Feelings of lethargy
Making you go to the toilet more (so you have to move around more)
But it will not have a direct effect on your metabolism to increase weight loss.
Signs of dehydration
Very often the signs and symptoms of dehydration are similar to other deficiencies in certain nutrients and are often overlooked by ourselves.
Key symptoms to be aware of that relate to dehydration are:
⦁ Thirst
⦁ Dry mouth, lips and eyes
⦁ Feelings of dizziness
⦁ Feeling tired
⦁ Headaches
⦁ Decrease on cognitive function
If you find that you are regularly suffering from any of these symptoms, the first thing I would suggest as a Nutritionist is to look at your current hydration levels. Quite often we mistake tiredness for an iron deficiency or headaches as requiring more magnesium (which might be necessary) however it often related back to going the basics well.
One of which is hydration.
How can you improve your hydration?
There are many different ways you can try and increase your hydration and it doesn’t all have to mean drinking more water.
See the tips below:
⦁ Take a water bottle with you into meetings
⦁ Have a water bottle/glass of water at your desk
⦁ Try Soda water to mix it up
⦁ Add sugar free cordials to water
⦁ Add lemon, mint, cucumber to water
⦁ Reduce your caffeine intake
⦁ Drink a glass of water before you drink your morning coffee
⦁ Eat more foods higher in fluid e.g soups, stews, salad, cucumber, celery, tomatoes
⦁ Drink a glass of milk to help maintain your hydration levels
How do you check your hydration levels?
The easiest way to is to check the colour of your urine every day. In the morning you are likely to see a stronger colour as you won’t have consumed any fluids while you sleep.
This is why this saying is key:
Hydrate before you caffeinate
There is so much you can do to support your health and well being by focusing on your hydration.
If you want help to improve your health, well being and don’t know were to start, I offer 1:1 personalised coaching to best support you achieve your goals.
I am an online Nutritionist working in Upper Hutt, Wellington and work with people worldwide.
