Most people know that they should drink more water. But have you ever wondered just how much water should I drink in a day? In this comprehensive guide, I give you my opinion on how to decide how much water your body needs.
The question I get asked a lot is how much water should I drink a day. Many people hear the standard opinion of drinking half your body weight in ounces. Based on my experience, I believe there are too many variable that make that a concrete recommendation.
How much water should I drink a day depends on your lifestyle – period!
For example, if one man works a labor intensive job and another a desk job, you could imagine how the first would need to consume additional water. You need to drink whatever amount of water that is right for you. So in this video I break down the symptoms associated with not drinking enough water. I also give you some strategies as to how you can make better choices when it comes to choosing high quality water.
If you’re wondering how much water should I drink a day while on the Ketogenic Diet or while intermittent fasting, then you should know that the same rules apply. Drinking enough water is really important for good health so be sure to follow these recommendations so that you can excel your health and your life.
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[Video Transcription] How Much Water Should I Drink A Day | A Comprehensive Guide
In this video, I’m going to answer the common question of, “How much water should I drink in a day?”
Hi, I’m Dr. Zyrowski from NuVisionExcel.com. As always, if you’re new to the channel, it’s such a pleasure to have you here. Be sure to subscribe, hit that little bell notification and I’m going to help you excel your health and your life.
In this video, we’re talking about how much water should I drink in a day. So, this is a very common question that we get and there is a lot of confusion around it because the rule of thumb is that you should drink 50% of your body weight in ounces. So, if you weigh 160lbs, you divide that in half, that’s 80lbs. So you should drink 80oz of water a day. Then, of course, change that according to your weight. The thing is that that number is so arbitrary. What if you’re pregnant? What if you’re nursing? What if you’re an athlete? What if you’re sitting in a desk chair all day? What if you’re doing a manual labor job out in the sun? So, there are so many different variables that go into it, so I really don’t like that number. Anyway, I’m going to give you some different things that you can look for to see whether or not you are dehydrated, and you need more water. Then I also want to give you some different strategies around drinking water. First of all, instead of using the 50% of your body weight in ounces, I go ahead and go with 40% – 60% of your body weight in ounces. So, you may need less than that, you may need more than that.
Let’s go ahead and look at some of these things that may give you an indication that you need more water. First of all, do you get headaches? When I see people are getting headaches, it’s one of the first questions I always ask is, ‘Have you been drinking enough water?” A lot of times, I’ll get, “Well, actually I only drank one or two glasses today.” So, that’s a very minimal amount of water. Definitely need to increase if you’re getting some headaches.
Constipation’s a big one too because your bowel starts to become sluggish if you’re not consuming enough water. So, in order to avoid constipation, you would want to keep the water intake up.
The next big one is muscle cramping. This is one that if you start getting the muscle cramping, the muscle twitching around the mouth, around the eyes, then there’s a good chance, once again, you’re not consuming enough water. For me, it’s always a struggle because I feel like I drink so much water, but it seems to be never enough especially if I’m having really hard workouts that I’m doing. For instance, the other night I woke up with just a nasty cramp in my leg and I thought, “Well, I’ll get up and walk it off.” It was so bad I couldn’t even walk. So, anyway, if you’re getting that muscle cramping even in the night then you definitely need to make sure that you’re drinking some more water. We’ll talk about electrolytes in a minute.
Now, the next one here is brain fatigue. So, if you’re having a little bit of confusion, like your brain just feels tired. Once again, think to yourself, “Well, I better grab some water because there’s a good chance you haven’t had enough.”
Then, dry mouth. If you’re getting a dry mouth, that’s a good signal from your body that you need to get some water.
Last here, is bright yellow urine. I’m not talking about bright yellow urine after you’ve consumed your vitamins. I’m just talking about throughout the day, you notice that your urine is very yellow, then there’s, once again, a good chance you’re not drinking enough water.
The other thing that you can look too, that I didn’t write on here is you can look to skin elasticity. This is an age-old trick that I learned when I was a kid that if you actually pinch the skin on the back of your hand and it doesn’t retract quickly and it isn’t very elastic, there’s a good chance that you’re dehydrated as well.
So, we want to make sure that we’re getting enough water on a regular basis because a lot of different health concerns can come out of not drinking enough water – kidney stones, gallbladder issues, hormonal imbalance, blood pressure rise, all these different things and we want to make sure that we’re getting enough water on the regular and consuming 40% – 60% in ounces of our body weight.
So, let’s go ahead and talk about some different strategies around water.
First of all, we want to drink simply water. Many people are waking up in the morning, they’re grabbing their coffee and then they’re getting a juice and then for lunch they’re grabbing a soda and then another coffee and then so on and so forth. The thing is, is that we want to make sure that we’re just consuming good, pure water because sure, you like to have your morning coffee and all that but if we’re consuming water only in the way of sugary drinks and coffee and things like that, then our bodies are not getting the hydration that it needs from it. So, we need to just kind of focus on shifting to just good, pure water and stop focusing so much on these different fancy drinks that are sweet and that have different flavors and artificial colors in it. We don’t want that stuff, so we’ve got to just stick to the simple water.
The next topic here of discussion is purity. We always want to make sure we’re drinking good, pure water. If you live in the city, then there’s a good chance you have chlorine in your water or fluoride in your water. If you live in the country, you can have things such as arsenic in your water. So, we want to make sure that no matter where we’re living, we’re always getting good, pure water. If you really want to know that your water is pure, I always recommend using distilled water. Somebody’s going to come at me and say, “Well, Dr. Zyrowski, you don’t want to drink distilled water because it lacks proper electrolytes, proper trace minerals.” Well, here’s the thing. I would rather have good, pure water and worry about adding trace minerals than drinking water that is toxic. So, making sure you’re getting that good, pure water is very important.
Next is are you hungry? What I mean by this is that many people are thirsty, and they confuse it for hunger, so they go and grab more food. Then, they still have this urge, so they grab more food, but the truth is, is that they’re really just thirsty. So, you know what, as a rule of thumb, always make sure that you have a glass of water if you feel that you’re hungry and then go on and eat your meal or get some food from there.
Next here are electrolytes. You heard me talking about the cramping, you hear me talking about the twitching, so that is a good chance that you have an electrolyte imbalance. Here’s what gets even more confusing about it is if you drink too much water, it’ll flush out electrolytes and cause an imbalance. If you drink too little water, you’ll have an electrolyte imbalance so wow, is it hard to be perfect! Anyway, we want to still adhere to this different rule here of 40% – 60% in ounces and then add electrolytes to our water if need be. You can add things such as pink Himalayan sea salt to your water and that’s loaded with trace minerals or you can get an electrolyte balancing drink and that can help as well.
Now last here is variety. I get it. Some people go, “Sigh, you know I just don’t want to drink water all day long. It’s so boring.” So, add a little spice, add a little variety to that. Some things that you can do first of all is, switch it up with some sparkling water, that’s a great way. The other thing that you can do is you can add a fruit to your water. There are actually these different containers out there that are really neat where you can add sliced up fruit to the bottom of the container and then you put the water at the top and so you get a little bit of flavored water whether it’s lemons, strawberries, whatever you want. It adds a little bit of variety.
So, anyway, when we look at how much water should I drink in a day, we want to stick to 40% – 60% of our body weight in ounces as a rule of thumb but you may need more, you may need less. Look to these different signs here. Other than that, give this video a thumbs up. Be sure to subscribe to my channel. I would greatly appreciate that. If you have any further questions, put it in the comments section below and then check out my other videos. I do tons of great videos on fasting and just all these different topics that are going to help you increase your health.
I’ll see you in the next video.