Hydrate…

This blog post is going to sound extremely elementary and yet I would bet 80% of the people reading it need to hear it daily. I always remember why people eat and drink a specific way when I begin cutting weight. For the majority of my year, I eat whatever I want and drink whatever I want or as little as I want. This isn’t because I would recommend my dietary habits or not recognize the massive impact nutrition has on my training results. If we’re being honest, I eat the way I do because I’m lazy, I love the taste of foods that are not good for me, and I’m a little undisciplined when it comes to specific dietary necessities.
One of the biggest changes in what I consume that occurs while cutting weight is how much water I consume. We have all heard from a very early age that we need to be drinking a substantially greater amount of water daily then we actually consume. When I’m not cutting late I probably consume 8-12 ounces of water and the majority of that water has some sort of pre-workout mixed with it. Basically, any water I consume happens mid-workout. The rest of the day I live either not drinking anything at all or on sweet tea and chocolate milk.
What I noticed when I begin cutting weight and my water intake increases by eight or ten times what it normally is, my recovery is greater. I know this will not come as a surprise but I tend to feel better, train better, and survive long training sessions with greater ease when I’m hydrated. Basically, simple hydration makes my training life and daily living better. And yet most of the year I don’t drink enough water.
Hopefully that information is not mind blowing or new ground for any of you. I think it was pounded into my head early on that we need to drink water. The question you have to ask yourself is why don’t you? I don’t because I’m lazy and undisciplined. It’s not that hard to keep a water bottle near you or with you at all times. Yet we would rather not consume anything at all than actually drink water. There is 1000 different scientific reasons for why we need to be drinking more water. I’m sure each of you are capable of Googling them or just trusting that nobody has ever said stop drinking water. Coming face-to-face with the reality that water consumption is an easy discipline to add to your daily living and one that, even when I’m not cutting, I should be disciplined in. I can’t make any promises but water isn’t something that is negotiable. Drink more water. It’s good for you and it’s good for your training. Far better than sweet tea and chocolate milk (although many of you would argue for the massive benefits of sugar – loaded chocolate milk)