Although we keep hearing different values for what percentage of the human body is water, one thing is certain…your body is more water than anything else. That in and of itself should tell you how important it is to drink water frequently and stay hydrated, but I’ll give you a few more reasons in hopes to hammer home the message.
-For those of you suffering from headaches, dehydration is one of the most common reasons for leading to them. In fact, as the weather warms up in the spring and people fail to compensate by drinking more water, sales of over the counter pain medication increase. Just ask your pharmacist.
-Dehydration lowers your metabolic rate, which means you’ll be burning less calories.
-Dehydrated muscle becomes, for lack of a better term – stickier; therefore, your muscles won’t slide over each other as well as they should. This means that you’ll lose flexibility and increase your risk of injury.
-Dehydration is a leading cause of constipation. Enough said.
So now that you see the reasons to stay hydrated, here’s how you do it. You want to drink about half of your body weight in pounds, in ounces of water (yes, water and only water), daily. If you’re working out hard or it’s a hot day, you’ll want to drink even more. If you’re well hydrated you should be urinating frequently, and it should be a pale lemon color.
