It’s not that surprising that many people mistake their body’s thirst signals for hunger. The cause is that thirst signals can sometimes be weaker. To figure out which it is, try drinking some water and waiting 15 minutes before reaching for a snack. If you’re actually hungry, you’re likely to feel a stomach pang. Being able to listen and give your body what it really needs is an important part of staying healthy and managing your nutrition.

Hydration

How do you know if your body is hydrated? Most of us have heard of, and use, the ‘wee’ test! First thing to know here is that what we eat and drink through our nutrition, including vitamins and minerals can effect the colour of urine. This means that we may think we need to hydrate whereas we may already be at a good level and and end up drinking water to an excess and becoming over-hydrated, which is just as bad.

Do you really know when you are thirsty or need to hydrate? As above, we can get things wrong if we don’t read our body’s signals correctly. If you ignore thirst we eventually don’t recognise it as we should. It’s also important to know that things are really quite simple, drink when thirsty, don’t when not. Your body is very good at telling you things. It knows when it does and doesn’t need to hydrate.

When the temperature is high and it’s time to train we need to understand what is needed to get our body back into a state of good hydration. First, do not reach for the sports drinks promoting the replacement of electrolytes. To replace 60g of sodium lost through a highly sweaty training session would require you to drink around a 100, 500mil sports drinks, which in turn would then cause Hyponatremia. In addition, the body’s defence systems would excrete the salts through urine to prevent it from a mass absorption of sodium.

What is ‘Hyponatremia’? The ‘Mayo Clinic describes it as:

Hyponatremia occurs when the concentration of sodium in your blood is abnormally low. Sodium is an electrolyte, and it helps regulate the amount of water that's in and around your cells.
In hyponatremia, one or more factors — ranging from an underlying medical condition to drinking too much water — cause the sodium in your body to become diluted. When this happens, your body's water levels rise, and your cells begin to swell. This swelling can cause many health problems, from mild to life-threatening.
Hyponatremia treatment is aimed at resolving the underlying condition. Depending on the cause of hyponatremia, you may simply need to cut back on how much you drink. In other cases of hyponatremia, you may need intravenous electrolyte solutions and medications.

There is a lot more to this, so if you are interested do a bit of research for yourself. But, remember this, ‘YOU CAN DRINK TOO MUCH WATER’ as well as too little.

While we are on the subject of training and hydration. Does not being fully hydrated affect your ability to train? No, it doesn’t. Your body can lose up to there to four percent of its total weight without any impact upon performance. Even if thirsty when you begin training there is still a long way to go before any issues. Sopping for a drink in the middle of a workout is far more to do with finding an excuse to stop for a rest than it is to do with a need for water.

Listen to your body and learn to read the signals. Drink when you’re thirsty. Don’t when you’re not.

Andy
CrossFit Ickenham
STRENGTH IN COMMUNITY

The thirst for water!