Drink up Buttercup

What do you think is one of THE most important resources for the human body? Is it carbohydrates or fats or proteins? Is it vitamins and minerals? It is something that most people overlook and do not take seriously….It is water! Your body can go weeks without food but only a few days without water. Did you know that a man’s body is around 60% water and a female’s is about 50% or that the human brain is about 75% water?

Water is highly involved in many bodily processes such as digestion, protection, pH regulation, temperature regulation, and transportation for substances (plus many many more). For example, blood is about 83% water and carries oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients and waste products from cell to cell. Think about urine. Urine removes the waste products from our body and if we are not consuming enough water thus not producing urine, the toxic waste levels can build up with in our bodies and cause us to become ill.

I cannot emphasize enough just how important water is! But what about water and how it relates to your fitness and/or weight loss goals? It’s not that important right? WRONG! Water HELPS with exercise performance, fat metabolism and fluid retention.

When we exercise, water helps enhance muscle contraction and tone in addition to aiding our effort and performance during a given task. If you are lacking energy and quickly fatigue during your workouts, try increasing your fluid intake throughout the day and especially during and post-workout. But how does water help metabolize fat? When the body is adequately hydrated, it can draw from fat stores to perform physiological tasks but when the body is lacking water, it has no choice but to draw water from within other cells, including fat cells, which decreases the likelihood that these fat stores will be burned off as energy, potentially resulting in increased fat storage over time.

Lastly, the biggest misconception that I hear about drinking water is if we are feeling puffy and retaining fluids, the more water we drink the more water we will hold. This is not true! It is actually lack of water that causes you to hold water. The body is extremely intelligent and when you are not drinking enough water, it thinks that it needs to hold to every drop it can get in order to perform. Another culprit to water retention is when you consume excessive sodium. This will cause you to hold water but it is a small factor compared to not drinking water. If you did consume too much sodium, guess what, you need water to shuttle the extra sodium out of your body…so drink up buttercup!

I am flying solo this weekend so I decided I will make something absolutely fabulous to enjoy that my hubby probably would not be too excited about. I am going to make a layered salad! I love the way layers look whether it be clothing, jewelry, hair styles, you name it! Here is my plan J

Have a great weekend y'all!

J