If you are serious about optimizing your health and longevity, hydration should be toward the top of your list of priorities. However, it’s not well known about what “hydrated” really is or how to achieve it. Dr. Andy Galpin, (Professor at CSU Fullerton, PhD Human Bioenergetics, Muscle Physiology) has a wealth of knowledge on hydration with professional and recreational athletes and shared it in a recent lecture he released on Youtube. This two hour lecture covers everything you would ever want to know about hydration, and here are my three takeaways from the lecture for the ageless athlete:
Consume 1/2 your bodyweight in fluid per day-How much water should you be drinking each day (outside of training)? Take your bodyweight in pounds and divide it by two and consume that much in ounces (eg. 180lbs/2=90 ounces fluid). Fluid should be mostly water.
During exercise, drink 4-6 ounces of fluid every 15 minutes-Andy suggests that we should replenish fluids as we exercise, as dehydration creates suboptimal performance. Sweat is a not just water, as we sweat out electrolytes as well as water. These electrolytes are composed of sodium, chloride, potassium, and magnesium (in addition to glucose). The amount of electrolytes should be customized per individual and can be measured using a number of at home tests.
Weigh yourself before and after your workouts to optimize hydration-Strip down and weigh yourself. Then workout, strip down again and weigh yourself (after toweling off). This is how much fluid you have sweated out during training (subtract any fluid that you consumed during training). You should then drink enough fluid (sweat), to get you back to 125% of the fluid loss (eg.180lbs. before and 178lbs. after is 2lbs. fluid loss or 32 ounces. 125% of 32 ounces is 40 ounces).
I tracked my own fluid loss in a 40 minute workout the other day (10 minute warm-up, 20 minutes of intervals, and 10 minute cooldown). I lost 2.2 lbs. of fluid during the workout! Had I not known this, I would have only had my roughly 16 ounce shake after the workout, falling behind on my hydration for the rest of the day.
Hydration is a LOW HANGING fruit, the return on investment is huge relative to the cost to the individual. Let’s get your hydration in check today! Click the link below to get started today!