08 - 4 Quick & Effective Hydration Hacks

In this episode, we’re diving into one of the most important (and often overlooked) aspects of health—hydration. Did you know that an estimated 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated? Water plays a crucial role in everything from digestion to energy levels, and today, I’m sharing four simple strategies to help you stay properly hydrated and feeling your best.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why water is the most important nutrient for your body
• How to calculate your daily water needs (and adjust for coffee, tea, and other diuretics!)
• The role of electrolytes in hydration and how to get them naturally
•  Practical tips to make drinking enough water easy and effortless

Have a nutrition or wellness question you’d love for me to answer on the podcast? Send me a message over on Instagram @Nourished_Living_, and I’ll include it in a future Q&A episode!

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review—it helps more people find the show and stay empowered on their health journey. 

Connect with Courtney: 

Instagram: @nourished_living_

Work With Me: Nourished Living

Transcript

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Welcome to the Nourished Living Podcast, where I'll be diving deep into nutrition, holistic wellness, and practical tips to help you live your healthiest, most vibrant life. I am Courtney Podany, a nutritional therapist, certified personal trainer, type one diabetic and mom. And I'm here to help you take charge of your health with ease and confidence. Together we'll explore how to nourish your body, mind, and soul in a way that feels good and sustainable. So grab your favorite beverage. Take a deep breath, and let's get into the episode. I. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Nourished Living Podcast. This is Episode eight. Episode eight. Already I have no idea how we got here. It is very exciting because. This had just been a dream of mine for so long, and now it's actually here. I am so grateful you have been along for the ride with me because I really am enjoying creating these episodes. So much so thank you, and I look forward to seeing what else this brings. And man, we just got into April, but this last week we had such beautiful weather in California. I am definitely a warm weather girl, and it felt so amazing to not have to have like multiple layers on and just. Be able to bask in the sun with a warm breeze and my feet in the grass. It was heavenly, and don't worry. I will definitely do an episode on the benefits of nature and grounding at some point because it truly is so beneficial. During the winter, I find that I don't ground as much because it's cold and I don't really want to be. Barefoot in the wet grass, but I was able to do it last week and I truly feel like it just rejuvenated me. So needless to say, I am very much looking forward to summer and warm weather and just all of the fun that summer brings. So next up on the menu, we are covering all things water and hydration. Water is the most important nutrient for our body. We've talked about the macronutrients, which are carbs, proteins, and fats, and those are all very important as well. But water is even more important than those. You've probably heard that you can survive up to three weeks without food in dire circumstances, but you can only survive three days without water. So here are a few of a water's responsibilities within our body and why it is so important. Water helps to remove wastes and toxins. It regulates our core body temperature. It helps with transportation for nutrients and oxygen and any type of resources we need moved. It helps to cushion and lubricate our bones and joints. It keeps our mucus membranes moist, so like the insides of our nose and our throat. It assists in healing processes. It makes up the majority of our cells and tissues, and like I said last episode, we have over a trillion cells in our bodies at any given time, and it helps with cell to cell communication. So what is the recommended hydration requirements? Our bodies are made up of a roughly 60% water, and based off of some of the natural processes that take place within our body, we are able to produce about. 8% of our water needs. However, that means that we are responsible for consuming the remaining 92% from external sources, which is quite a bit. The ultimate goal is to consume half of your body weight in ounces every single day. To calculate this, you just need to know how much you weigh and divide it by two. For example, if you weigh 160 pounds, half of that is 80 ounces, and that would be your goal each day. But we also need to account for any diuretics that we drink. Diuretics increase the potential of you needing to visit the bathroom more frequently, which could result in more fluid lost and not enough water to carry out all the responsibilities it has. It's actually estimated that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated, so I don't want that to be you. Diuretics include coffee, tea, soda, juice, or alcohol. When we drink these, we need to replenish to make up for and account for that water loss. When we do go to the bathroom, one serving of a diuretic is considered eight ounces. So when you drink eight ounces of coffee or you drink eight ounces of soda, it is then recommended to have. 12 ounces of water to replenish that So if we go back to our example of 80 ounces of water per day, And you had eight ounces of coffee. we would add 12 ounces to that new goal, which would now make it 92 ounces of water for that day. So the important thing to note is that this can vary day to day, you know, every single day. If you are drinking different amounts of diuretics each day. Since fruits and vegetables actually provide us with a little bit of a natural source of water, if you begin to notice that you are craving fruits or vegetables, that could be a sign that your body is looking for water. I know for me in the summer, I tend to crave. Fruit a lot because where I live, it gets up into like the triple digits quite often. So despite drinking a lot of water, my body usually needs even more during high times of heat and sweating. Some other signs of dehydration could be fatigue, irritability. Anxiety, depression, cravings, muscle cramps, and headaches. But if it is more of a long-term thing that's been happening, chronic dehydration could turn into worse. Symptoms like heartburn, joint pain, back pain, angina or chest pain, migraines, constipation and colitis. Obviously, things that we would like to avoid. One of the ways that we can hydrate ourselves even better and actually hold onto the water that we are drinking, is to include electrolytes. Electrolytes help in maintaining the balance of fluids in our body. Electrolytes consist of sodium, potassium chloride, calcium, phosphate, and magnesium. When we have these electrolytes on board, our body is able to retain the water we drink rather than it just flushing right through us. When we begin drinking larger quantities of water to meet our daily goals, and if this happens to be a large jump from the quantity that you had previously been drinking, electrolytes will definitely help us become accustomed to this quantity quicker and not have to run to the bathroom every hour. So when electrolytes are present, you'll retain water so it can be utilized. You might hear retain water and think about like swelling in your ankles or bloating or edema, and that's not what I mean. I'm just saying it should decrease your trips to the bathroom and then be utilized in the way that it should. One of the easiest ways to obtain electrolytes is to add a pinch of unrefined sea salt into your water. Now, it doesn't need to taste like the ocean or anything. It doesn't need to be a ton of sea salt, but this is a quick way to get some sodium in you, and it's probably something you already have in your kitchen. However, there are a ton of electrolyte drinks out there. Some other great sources include coconut water, Bone broth, aloe vera juice milk, adding trace minerals. Gatorade, zero. I personally prefer Gatorade, zero versus regular Gatorade, because there is no sugar in it. There's Element, which is the letters LMNT, and that is a flavored electrolyte packet that you add into your water. They come in single servings, so it's easy to take with you on the go. And at this point in my life, I basically only drink coffee and water. So it is nice sometimes to add flavor in to mix it up a little bit. They are kind of salty. So I can typically get two servings out of just the one packet, which is nice too. Or there's buoy which are actually unflavored electrolyte drops. Again, you just, squirt a couple drops into your preferred beverage and mix it up. And side note, I am not sponsored by these companies or anything. I have just put a ton of research into the best food brands over the last six years, so I want to share it with you so you don't need to invest all of that time. Or you can just add some lime juice or lemon juice into your water. I have come across a lot of people who say they don't like water because it has no taste or it's boring. So adding in some fruit or natural fruit juice could be an easy, tasty option. You can get a pitcher with a fruit infuser in it, add whatever fruit you like. You know, berries, oranges, cucumbers, whatever. And then you can have that ready to go in your fridge whenever you need more. I've also had a lot of past clients who have said it's really hard for them to hit their water goals. So what I would suggest is to buy a nice glass or stainless steel reusable water bottle if you do not already have one. That way there's no plastic leaching into it. And with stainless steel, it really helps to regulate temperatures. So if you wanna keep it warm, it'll stay warm. Or if you wanna keep it cold, it'll stay cold. And once you figure out what your goal is, figure out how many times you need to refill that water bottle each day to reach your goal. If you got a 20 ounce water bottle and your daily goal is 80 ounces, then you will have to drink four of those water bottles throughout the day to achieve your goal. That would also just be incredibly easier than having to keep track of 10, eight ounce glasses throughout the day. Typically after three, I would forget which number I was on. Also, once you get that water bottle, just take that thing with you literally everywhere you go. Anytime you leave the house, make sure it is filled up and coming with you. Being able to sip your water throughout the whole day is ideal because it is easier on your stomach. And then hopefully you won't ever get into a situation where it's like 8:00 PM at night, but you still need to drink 30 ounces of water to reach your daily intake. That would be a lot of water on your stomach. And then since it's so close to bed, you might be up a few times during the night. So. Ideally, we are just sipping water right from when we wake up in the morning until later that day. When you reach your goal. So to recap, calculate your daily goal so you know how much you need to drink, but don't forget to account for those diuretics by adding in 12 ounces of water for every eight ounces of diuretic that you drink. Add in electrolytes to your water. If you don't already have one, buy a reusable glass or stainless steel water bottle and take that with you everywhere and sip your water throughout the day to avoid having to chug large amounts. So that is. Four strategies to keep you hydrated and to avoid becoming part of the 75% of Americans that are estimated to be chronically dehydrated. And this is something that can be implemented right away. So no excuses. I feel like a drill sergeant saying that you do not know how many times I've had personal training clients say that I'm a lot easier than what they had imagined because, you know, they were imagining a drill sergeant like get down and give me 50 type of person before meeting me. But obviously that is not me. But anyway, those should be easy enough to get you started and you can start that today. So hopefully that all makes sense and is helpful for you. I wanted to remind you again that if you have a nutrition question you would love to have answered on the podcast, please send it over to me on Instagram. I am. At Nourished underscore Living underscore, and that will be put into the q and a episode that I am creating. And don't worry about when you are listening to this episode, if you have a question, just go ahead and send it over, and I promise I will get to it in a future episode. Because if you are thinking it, most likely other people are thinking it as well, and I would love to bring my expertise to the question and have it answered for you. All righty folks, thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning into the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. You can also connect with me over on Instagram at Nourished Living for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.