Last week we dug into ten reasons your diet isn’t working. The topic hit a few buttons and brought up several questions. Instead of moving on, I decided we’re going to take it a step further and spend a few weeks breaking down each reason more in-depth.

As the song says, let’s start at the very beginning… I hear it’s a great place to start.

You’re dehydrated.

You’re probably saying; please don’t make me drink a gallon of water daily. I’m not here to do that… except maybe I am. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Let’s start by talking about the louder signs that you’re dehydrated. As usual, this is where I start talking about listening to your body. Our body has a way of telling us things and it’s up to us to start listening.

• Tiredness
• Feeling thirsty/lightheaded
• Headaches
• Dark/strong-smelling urine. Yup, we go here on this podcast.
• While we’re at it… if you’re struggling to go to the bathroom in the other sense.
• Dry mouth

Other signs that you just aren’t drinking enough water, in general:

• Lack of energy overall (it goes align with tiredness)
• Your skin looks dull, damaged and needing “something.”
• Sugar cravings
• Struggling to lose weight despite “doing it all right”

What should you do about these signs that you’re dehydrated?

Drink more water 😉

Okay while it should be that simple, it’s not quite that simple.

The best way to figure out how much water you should be drinking is take your body weight in pounds and divide it in half.

That’s how many ounces you should drink.

Example: 150/2 = 75

Now I like to add more to that equation.

8oz per cup of caffeine (ie coffee)
8oz per 30 minutes of workout.

How do you drink more water if you just don’t like water?

There are a few ways to get to this. The biggest “how” is going to be when you start to feel the effects of drinking more… you won’t be as off put by water when you realize the difference it makes.

• Add fruit such as strawberries, lemons, oranges and pineapples.
• If you like adding liquid IV or something else, do so in moderation. Keeping in mind, most of those packets are meant to rebuild certain vitamins and minerals after a workout… not to drink 4 a day.
• Figure out how you like your water, hot, cold, luke warm, tap water, filtered water, etc… This might sound snobbish… but we get to be snobs around here.
• Make yourself drink one water bottle before coffee.
• Buy yourself a new water bottle. Okay, this won’t work weekly, but it is a good jump start if you’re struggling.

Try it for a week, increase you water and see what happens.

You might be surprised.