When we think about the winter here in New England, we don’t necessarily think about dehydration.
In the winter months we don’t really have all those cues we have in the summertime or the spring where we are sweating. Even if it’s winter time, we are losing moisture through our layers, through movement here in the gym. You need to make sure that we’re not just relying on thirst cues for when we’re thirsty (a dry mouth for example), because most of the time that’s when it’s just a little too late.
Staying hydrated has a bunch of different benefits, one of the biggest being how big of a role water plays in helping with your digestion. Think about absorbing nutrients and removing waste from the body. Think about absorbing nutrients and removing waste from the body. You get better, clear skin, and also increase your performance in the gym when intaking the right amount of H2O. I know water is not everybody’s favorite, or sometimes it’s hard throughout the day to remember to drink before that dry mouth feeling.
I have a couple suggestions to help make it easier to drink your water!
Keep a bottle of water with you at all times and remember to drink it.
Whether it’s sitting right in front of you or you set a little reminder on your iPhone that says, ‘Hey, drink a sip right now!’ , make sure that you get that in and have a goal for the day.
If you have a Nalgene or a bigger bottle, mark it off with goals to make sure you’re hitting them throughout the day. There are a ton of these marked up bottles in the marketplace as well to make it even easier to motivate you to drink. Give yourself a little reward at the end of the day for reaching your goal.
Increasing your fruit and vegetable intake also will help because those pieces of food have water in them. Vegetables like cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, tomato, lettuce. Those will help you stay hydrated through the water they consist of.
Something you can do is if you’re one of those people that really don’t enjoy the taste of water, you can spice it up a little bit. I like to use lemons squeeze into my water, but you can even take a water bottle with the bottom compartment where you put cut vegetables, whether it’s like mint and cucumber or whatever, that you’re chopping up and using from your salad to infuse your water giving it a little bit of a different taste.
And if you really don’t think about drinking something cold in the wintertime, teas are a great option. A variety of different caffeinated and decaffeinated teas will really help keep you hydrated, but also keep you warm – nice to warm your hands as well!
I really like the Tazo tea brand because it’s a pretty clean brand and it comes in a variety of flavors that I really enjoy.
So try those out. Tell me what you think. And stay hydrated this wintertime.
