5 Tips to Boost Health and Performance with Hydration
Hydration is one of those topics in the health world that has many different opinions, you must drink a gallon every day or don’t drink too much water or it will deplete your minerals. It doesn’t need to be so complicated, by making a few tweaks and incorporating even a couple of the things in this post you can boost your health and performance with hydration in a big way. I am a big believer in tuning into your body and listening to its requests. That might sound a little strange but our bodies have great feedback mechanisms. Some of those mechanisms are easier to hear than others, for example, if you get a sunburn that is your body saying you have had too much sun. When it comes to things like thirst and hunger signals, it can sometimes be a little more difficult to hear. With so many amazing-tasting foods and drinks it can be hard at times to decipher the signals since these hyper-palatable things trick our bodies’ regular response to thirst and hunger. I don’t want to get lost in the weeds but instead provide a few helpful things I have implemented to help find quality nutrition to improve my mental and physical performance. Without delay here are the five things I utilize for optimum hydration.
5 Hydration Tips for Performance :
- Water first thing in the morning
When you wake up after sleep your body is in a fasted state, meaning it has been many hours since your last food or water consumption. This is why it’s important to consume a majority of your water in the first half of the day. As soon as you wake up drink one or two big glasses of water (14-20oz). This will help kick-start your body and your day for hydration success!
2. Get a Water Bottle
Seriously it’s so helpful having a big water bottle near you. It removes any obstacle to getting hydrated. It’s a simple but highly effective tool, purchase a water bottle, personally, I prefer either glass or stainless options.
3. Listen to your body:
As I mentioned above it’s important to slow down and listen to our bodies’ signals. This can be challenging at times but the more you practice it the better. This may be obvious but when you are thirsty this is typically the sign you are looking for (don’t override this), on days when you did some intense exercise or in hot weather where you may be sweating more than usual you should consume more water surrounding those efforts than on a regular day.
4. Proper Nutrition:
Eat whole foods, which are often comprised of much more water than processed food. For example, watermelon is about 90% water! This will help to stay hydrated simply by consuming the proper foods.
5. Electrolytes:
I am not a big supplement pusher but there are a few things I utilize that have helped me. Adding some electrolytes will not only help your hydration but will make your water taste delicious. Having these minerals in your water, salt, potassium, and magnesium are the main ones. They are critical in refueling your body and cells whilst increasing performance. You can get this by purchasing and adding these minerals yourself or by purchasing an electrolyte supplement, my favorite is LMNT it doesn’t have any artificial ingredients and no sugar.
Conclusion
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I hope this provided some helpful hydration tips or something new you can implement to boost your health and performance. My goal is to provide easy-to-implement health tips and tricks to find your optimal self. I hope to provide the most current and useful information I can find and as the landscape changes in the health and wellness world, my thoughts may evolve as well as I hope yours will too. I think it is always a good thing to assess and reevaluate the things we do from time to time, that way we can continue to grow. If you like to nerd out on hydration this is a great podcast by Andrew Huberman, it covers everything in great detail.