The importance of water intake

Good morning ladies, welcome to the podcast. I hope you're well, and I hope you've had an amazing week.

I wanted to talk to you about the importance of water intake today, but as we normally start off, I just wanted to let you know about some of the things that have been going on in my life this week.

So this week I have had all the emotions. I’m going to my coach’s mastermind in January, and I was having all the feels this week. I was feeling so grateful, I was like, “oh my goodness, I can't believe this is my life, I'm going to be going to America for one week to learn how to manage my mind better so that I can empower my clients to manage their minds better.”

I know that when I am focusing on how I can show up better as a coach, I can serve all of you guys better as your coach. So I’m going to be going in January, and it's going to be amazing. I also had all the guilty feelings and things as well, thinking I'm going to be leaving my kids and my husband for a week.

And even though my husband is super supportive and I know that he'll fully be able to deal with it all amazingly, I was still feeling that it's not fair for him to do it on his own. So it's been an emotional week, but mainly positive emotion, mainly feelings of gratitude, mainly thinking “I can't believe that this is the life that I have created for myself.”

And remember ladies, for me, it all started off with weight loss coaching as well. I came in to lose weight and I had no idea that all of these other amazing side effects were going to come from that. Learning how to manage my mind in other areas of my life, improving that relationship with myself and having that confidence to become a coach and coach all of you.

So I'm feeling super grateful today. Okay. Enough about me. Let's talk about the importance of water intake. 

So most people know that they should drink more than they normally do because the majority of the population, especially for people who want to lose weight, do not drink enough. So this is an episode for you if you feel that you are not drinking enough water. If you have been drinking plenty of water and you're happy with your water intake, then you may still learn some tips from here, but it may not be as useful for you. 

As we know, water is the main component of our human bodies; up to 60% of the human body is composed of water. In specific areas of the body, it may be up to 80% water. For example, the majority of the blood is made up of water, but in places like the bone, it will be  lower percent. 

So, what is water used for? It regulates our internal body temperature via things like breathing and sweating, and it's the most important nutrient in every cell that we have. It's useful in flushing out waste, and it acts as a shock absorber in places like the brain and the spinal cord and helps lubricate our joints so that every time we move our bones don't grate against each other.

Now in weight loss specifically, why is it useful? The main thing is that thirst is often mistaken as hunger. So this is something that comes up a lot with my clients and the difference between normal physical hunger and thirst manifesting as hunger is that when you're thirsty, it may make you feel extremely hungry.

So it may be more urgent, this hunger and most people think, okay, I'm hungry, let me go and eat something. And often when you're feeling extreme hunger because of thirst, what tends to happen is you may eat something and you may not feel satisfied afterwards, so then you may end up eating more thinking, “well, this hunger still hasn't gone away, so let me eat more.” And actually what ends up happening is because it wasn't food that your body needed and it was actually water, the sensation of hunger that is actually thirst doesn't go away. 

And sometimes what happens for my clients and for me is that when it's actually thirst that I'm feeling or that they're feeling, they crave things like fruits or vegetables or things that have a lot of water intake.

And the mistake a lot of my clients often make is that when they're having something with a lot of water intake, like soup or dahls or things like that, then they think, “Oh, see, I did eat something and that sensation went away, so it must be hunger”, but I just want you to question yourself, is it actually food that you need or is it actually water that your body is seeking?

So that may be a question to ask if you think that you are feeling hunger when actually you're thirsty. 

Another thing is that when you drink water, you get better mental clarity. And that is really useful in weight loss, because it allows you to make better choices. So when you have that better mental clarity and you're concentrating better and you don't feel sluggish, then what tends to happen is, if you have made a plan for your food beforehand, you're more likely to stick to it because water helps with the mental clarity and the concentration. Then when you are processing an urge, you're more likely to follow through and process that urge rather than give in and eat the food that was off your protocol. So that's how it can be very useful as well. 

Now it can be useful because it helps with better bowel movements. So because you're drinking enough water, that really helps with having a regular system and eating to fullness and hunger hormones and things like that. Now bowel movements aren't just based on water, it could be based on a whole host of other things like how much you're moving, the types of foods you're eating, how much fibre soluble and insoluble fibre, how stressed you are, a whole host of other things, but drinking more water can help with that. 

Another thing is that it can really help with is clearing out the waste from our bodies. And why that's useful is when we are flushing out our body of all the toxins that we don't actually need anymore, then that can also help with feeling more energetic, feeling like you want to do the things you need to do. So that will also help with you wanting to follow through with the decisions that you've made beforehand.

A question that I get asked a lot is “how do I know how much is enough for me?” And the honest answer is it varies for different people. Most people will be doing well if they drink between two to three litres a day, but for some people it may be slightly less snd for some people it may be slightly more. 

It also depends on how much exercise you're doing, how much you sweat, all of the things like that, because if you are losing a lot of water through sweating, for example, then you may need to up your water intake. If you live in a hot climate, then I would suggest drinking slightly more water than you think, because you may be sweating a lot more because of the thermal regulation in your body. 

So how much is enough? It can be dependent on how you feel. What I suggest is experimenting with it. Try seeing how much water you're actually drinking. You could track it, there's lots of apps that you could use to track your water intake. Or if you've got a 500ml water bottle, you may just say, “I'm going to drink four of these and see how I go.”

Then you may experiment with 2.5 litres, so five of those bottles. Then after a week you may experiment with six of those bottles, so you can then see how you’re feeling when you are varying your water intake.

I noticed that when I was drinking two litres of water a day, I was doing okay but I was still feeling a little bit lethargic and I was still feeling extreme hunger, and that was only because I was feeling thirsty. Now this may be because I do exercise. And so this may have impacted how much water actually needed. 

Another way of knowing how much is enough is looking at the colour of your urine. A urologist once said to me that if the colour of your urine is the same colour as champagne you're doing well. If you wanted to look at this further, what you could do is go online and there are urine colour charts. So you can see “okay, what colour is my urine right now? And what colour do I need it to be for it to be adequate water intake?” Now this is a very crude measure, but what I would go by is how you actually feel; that's a much better indicator.

Another thing may be regularity of your bowels. I noticed that when I'm not drinking much water, then I feel more constipated so that may be something that may be the same for you. 

Another indicator that I've already talked about is hunger; that extreme hunger. So if you're getting that often, then you may be thinking, “okay, I've not drunk enough water because this is actually not real hunger. This is just a manifestation of hunger because of thirst”. 

Other symptoms may be things like headaches and lethargy. I know that when I haven't drank enough water, I get a headache quite quickly and I feel tired and sluggish. So that may be something that's coming up for you too. 

Now moving on to how you can actually drink more water, there are lots of forms of water that you can have. You can experiment with, “So I prefer still water? Do I prefer sparkling water? Do I prefer water that's ice cold? Do I prefer water that's warm from the kettle? Do I prefer it at room temperature? 

Some people find drinking water on its own quite bland and boring, so they may want to add a slice of lemon or some cucumber or some berries or something. But, just a word of caution if you are fasting and you're doing intermittent fasting, then these things will raise your insulin. 

What I would suggest is initially starting off with not having these things and then if you're struggling, then maybe adding them and accepting that this may slightly raise your insulin and seeing how you go. 

Some people would like to add cordial or squash to their water, and if you're fasting, then I would also suggest not to do that because it does raise your insulin, even artificial sweeteners can still raise your insulin levels. 

I used to drink squash every single meal before, but now I don't drink it at all because I noticed that it actually increases my cravings for sugary food. So my brain thinks, “oh, this is sweet, I want more of it”, and it doesn't know the difference really between sugar and sweetener. And so it wants more and more sweet foods, so that's why I don't drink it. 

But if you're struggling with your water intake, that could be something that you do. 

Now a few tips that I suggest to my clients and that I use myself. I like to drink at least a third to a half of my water intake for the day first thing in the morning. So if I drink three litres of water a day, when I wake up what I do is I drink two, 500ml glasses of water. 

So I drink my one litre first thing in the morning, and that's because when you are sleeping, you are not consuming any water so your body may be dehydrated in the morning. So what you want to do is start off your day as you mean to go on and drink at least a third of your water intake in the morning. For me, that's one litre first thing.

What I also tend to do is set myself up for success. If I know that I am going to have a busy day with clients, then what I do is - I like to drink slightly warm water because it feels better in my throat and it feels better in my body.

So I boil my kettle when I'm setting myself up for the day, and I have a little thermos where I put my hot water and I mix it with some cold water and I take that and my coffee into my office. So I'm starting my day off well, and then I fill my little thermos up so that, if in between calls I am thirsty, I can still have access to water because what I've noticed is that when I didn't do that, then I would often go five, six hours without drinking. So I decided that this is something that would help. 

So how can you do that for yourself? How can you ensure that you are setting yourself up for success as well? Another thing is ensuring that say, 30 minutes to an hour before I eat, I make sure that I drink some water.

Now it doesn't need to be an excessive amount because we’re not drinking so that we eat less food. That's not the point of this at all. The point of it is to ensure that we are quenching any thirst that we may have so that it is not mistaken as hunger, because if you're eating food to get rid of thirst, it's just not going to be very efficient.

What you can also do is you can eat more watery vegetables, because a lot of vegetables have a lot of water intake. I like to eat a lot of salad, so I'll have a lot of cucumber because I know that that's got a lot of water intake and that really helps me feel energetic and I'm able to concentrate a lot more.

Another thing you could do is add water to your foods. So say you're having soups or dahls or things like that you can add some water to that, and that can help with your water intake as well. Especially if you find that you don't enjoy water, that may be something that you can do. 

And another thing is you can do something called habit stacking, where you have a habit that you're already doing and you add in this drinking water habit on top of that. So for example, before I brush my teeth in the evenings, I drink a glass of water. So I know that I'm always going to be brushing my teeth. So just before I go and brush my teeth, I remind myself “okay, go and drink your water and then go and brush your teeth.”

So what I want you to do is to question, are you drinking enough water? And if the answer is, no, I want you to question, is this something that I would like to incorporate? Most people will say, yes, this is something that I would like to incorporate. So I want you to think about “how can I make one small change to my daily routine that will allow me to drink more water?”

For you that may be taking in a little thermos with you when you're working. It may be every time you go for a wee, filling up your water bottle. It may be adding more water to your food. Whatever it may be for you, if you make this one small change this will increase your water intake. And in essence, this will make you fuel your body with the water that it needs. 

So I urge you to start putting some of these tips and things into practice so that you can ensure that you are giving your body as much water as it needs. 

Okay. Ladies, if you found this useful, please share it with someone. I am on this mission to help as many south Asian women manage their minds and lose weight in a way that is permanent. If you found this useful, please share it with someone. You can recommend the podcast. You can write me a review and I would really appreciate that, so that I can see how it is actually impacting you, especially if you are using the podcast to positively impact your life I would love to hear from you. 

All right, ladies, I will see you again next week. Take care. Bye-bye.