Jonathan Steedman (00:00.854)

Welcome back to the Bite Me Nutrition podcast. Food groupies, I'm talking to you today about hydration. And I'm wearing blue, which is coincidental, just because that's where I'm up to in my colour rotation of the podcast. It's not because it's to do with, how good, how good. Now, if you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, I also film these with video and put them on YouTube. So if you want to actually see me waffle my way through this, then head over there and see the sweet blue lighting and the sweet blue hoodie.

Anyway, I'm not going to do the boring hydration like, hydration is good because we're 80 % water or whatever the hell it is. You know you should be drinking enough water. And lots of you aren't. And plenty of you are drinking too much. So we're going to talk about that a little bit as well. I'm not going to talk too much about that. But I'm going to give you a couple of my top tips for staying hydrated. That's what this is about, essentially. Firstly, you want to drink enough that your urine is light yellow, so pale

straw colour through to clear. It does not need to be clear all the time. To be honest, if it's clear all the time, you're probably over hydrating. And there's definitely been a big move in the last few years of like the more water you drink, the healthier you are drinking four plus litres a day, those ridiculously large water bottles. Now, if you are losing a lot of fluids because you work outside in a really humid environment, you sweat like crazy, then yeah, you probably do need to drink quite a liters a day.

to replace that. But for most of us, like I'm thinking about myself, who, yeah, I train pretty hard and then I sit in the technician office the rest of the time, I don't need four liters of water a day. Okay? So, and you probably don't either. that's, I think the other reason why electrolyte supplements have become really popular, because they can create a problem by getting you to drink five liters of water a day and piss every 30 minutes, but they can solve that by then giving you a supplement. So anyway, don't fall into that.

Drink enough so your urine is light yellow through to clear. Or virtually every fluid counts when it comes to hydration. Tea counts, coffee counts. That doesn't mean I want you to hydrate using coffee, but 350 mils of a milky coffee or even a black coffee topped up still counts as hydration. Tea absolutely does, diet soft drinks absolutely do, kombucha, all liquids count towards your hydration.

Jonathan Steedman (02:20.536)

I still want at least 70, if not 80 % of your daily fluid intake to come from water, but it's okay if you top that up with other things, right? I would actually classify non-caffeinated herbal teas in this scenario as well, peppermint, chamomile, I don't know other teas, I fricking hate tea, but like non-caffeinated herbal teas also just count as water. So they can be in that 80 % as far as I'm concerned. But yes, it all counts. Now let's talk to you dehydrated unicorns.

Here are some of the things, the tips that I would recommend for increasing your hydration. The first is understand that you don't need to remind yourself forever. The first week or so of drinking more water is going to be very difficult and you will need to be quite intentional about it. But then there's a water balancing hormone. There's a bit of cool body chemistry that goes on. And suddenly your body's thirst signals will change a little. And so your body will actually get thirstier and remind you to drink more.

you just need to kind of stick at it for a couple of weeks to get that to happen. know that this is not going to be hard for the rest of your life. We just got to give it a good shove initially. So some ways in which I I help some ways I suggest clients help remind themselves to drink more water. First and foremost, alarms. That's probably the easiest one. an alarm on your Apple watch or your smartwatch or your smart device or your calendar alert, whatever's going to hit you in the face hard enough.

every hour drink water. Okay, again, like I said, this is not a forever solution. This is a couple of weeks solution. So that might be all you need. The next thing you can do is pair a big drink of water with every time you eat. So hopefully you're eating at least four times a day, right? Maybe three times. If you're eating less than three times a day, worry about how much nutrition you're able to get in that time. But anyway, let's say that you're eating three plus times a day. Let's say at each occasion of eating, you drink 400 mils, which is a

decent ish cup of water, that's 1.2 mils, like a mils, 1.2 liters of water. That's pretty good. Like, so if you're doing 1.2 liters of water, and then maybe somewhere else in the day, you can remind yourself to have diet Coke or a tea or, you know, God forbid, another glass of water. And all of a sudden, we're at like 1.6, we're pushing two liters, like look at you go, right? So you don't need to do anything too fancy if at main meals, you can have about 400, 500 mils of water.

Jonathan Steedman (04:48.344)

the next thing you can do is have a water bottle. Actually you should be doing that anyway, but we'll talk about that in a second. Have your water bottle and have kind of check, not check ins. What am I trying to say? Checkpoints throughout the day. And so if you have say like a liter water bottle, it might be like, it needs to be gone by lunch. And so you try and sip of it, sip on it throughout the morning, but maybe it hits lunchtime and you realize you've got 500 mils left. Guess who's about to skull 500 mils of water.

And you you do that a couple of times and you realize this kind of sucks and it can help remind you to drink a little bit more frequently. You you fill it up at lunch and then the goal is done by dinner, right? So using checkpoints in the day, whether that be eating times or whether that be like when I leave for work, when I get home from work, when I go to the gym, you're using those other occasions to remind you to drink water can also be really helpful. Now, another big thing is flavoring it, making it interesting, right? And there's a couple of different ways that we can do this.

Probably my favorite is like cold water tea bags. There used to be some really great twinings ones, but they've discontinued them. But I believe T2 has a range of cold water tea bags. There's probably some other ones as well, but basically any kind of fruity floral tea can be really helpful. Just double check that it's just tea. You can often get, I don't know how to pronounce this, all. T-I-S-A-N-E, Tisan something? I'm so sorry. But T2 has those. They're quite high in sugar as well, which is...

Okay, but probably not something I want you to be putting in your water every day. So try and make sure it's just tea, but that option can make it a bit more interesting and a bit more flavorsome. Things like cucumber or berries, those sorts of things in there can be really good. I'd be wary of putting lime and lemon in your water too often just because of the way the citric acid in those foods can soften your teeth enamel. fruits can be a good way to do that.

Otherwise, honestly, a little bit of diet soft drink is not a bad idea. So make it as diluted as you can handle, but a little bit of diet right can be, again, it can make that more appealing and make it more interesting. Now, the last thing you can do is you can absolutely use bubbly water, carbonated water. It hydrates you just as well. And some people find that it's beneficial or like it's more interesting. So they drink it. Again, you need to be mindful of the teeth and animal situation. So.

Jonathan Steedman (07:14.082)

try use a straw, try not to brush within 30 minutes of having bubbly water. And if you drink a ton of bubbly water and you've got bloating that you haven't been able to solve, I've had lots of clients who that has been the cause of their bloating, not a food sensitivity or any tolerance or anything. just be mindful, it might impact how your gut feels. Not certainly does not happen for everyone, but it might impact yours. So just be aware of that. Yes.

Try one of those if you do struggle to get hydration in. What I often find is people who think they're not drinking enough water have these lofty, crazy social media goals of four liters a day. So if that's you, calm down. They then feel like the only thing that hydrates them is water. And while yes, the majority of your hydration should come from water, it doesn't all need to. So don't forget to count the other liquids in your life. Alcohol doesn't count by the way, but all other liquids do. And then if you've done

those two things and you still feel like you're probably needing to increase your fluid intake, then think about flavoring it, think about using an alarm, think about using times in your day, so those checkpoints around like, or pairing, habit stacking, if you will, a drink of water with a meal. And as I was talking then, I realized the last one I forgot to do, get a fancy water bottle, I'm holding up my Yeti, which actually has Spider-Man stickers on it, thanks to my son. Sorry, I need to do a rate, thanks to you.

Thanks anyway. So I have that on my desk at all times. As you just saw, I reached to the side and picked it up. It's there to go. Sometimes I even put it in front of me. You want your water bottle to be front and center, like in your way, annoyingly in sight, because that will remind you. I also would strongly encourage you to, if you can, spend a little bit more money and get a really nice water bottle. This thing is a joy to drink from. I got the chug cup because I like the bigger opening. That's what she said. But anyway.

There's straws and picky poison, but it keeps it really cold. I really like cold water. So again, that thing makes me drink so much more water because I think it looks cool and it makes the water taste nice and it makes it really accessible. So that would be the last suggestion as well. Get a good water bottle, a water bottle you like. Spend a little bit more if you can, get it in front of you. And I think if you combine all of those things, you will not be a shriveled little prune and you will be hydrated.