“The 4th Macronutrient”

There are so many catch phrases around water that we hear time and time again, like we need to drink 8 glasses of water a day for optimal health, water is life, the majority of the human body is made up of water etc, etc. These popular water clichés become a little redundant and forgettable, but the thing is, they are all true. So let’s dive into it, and explore a little about water and why this amazing resource is so vital to our health, wellness and happiness.

There are 3 macronutrients that our bodies use as building blocks for our health: Carbohydrates, Fats and Proteins. But, what about water? One of my teachers referred to water as the “4th macronutrient” or the “secret macronutrient,” which I immediately loved, and latched onto as our bodies need water just as much as the other Macronutrients. By definition, water cannot be considered a nutrient because it doesn’t provide calories, aka energy. However, I totally believe that water energizes us. Not in the same way that calories from food do, but because it is the conduit that connects everything in our bodies and allows energy to flow. Without water the nutrients from our food would have no way of getting to where they need to go. Water, along with our breath, are our life source.

Why is water so important? I strongly believe the first step for improving your overall health is to drink more, or at the very least enough water. Up to 60% of the adult human body is water. I know you’ve heard this before but really let that sink in. More than half of our bodies are H₂O! According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. That one blew my mind. The organ associated with air is composed of mostly water. Woah! Your skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones have significant water content at 31%. We can survive 3 weeks without food but only 2-8 days without water.

There are a multitude of functions water serves, including being the foundation for our cellular structure, regulating our body temperature through our sweat, and playing a vital role in digestion, including aiding in healthy elimination. It creates neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain. Water delivers all micro and macro nutrients into the bloodstream and to our cells, in addition to carrying oxygen to all of our cells. It is also protective to our organs, nerves, soft tissue, spinal cord and bones, just to name a few of those vital functions. Why the heck wouldn’t you want to give your body the ideal amount of water if it serves all these crucial purposes and so many more?

So you drink a lot of liquids? Do those liquids get to count towards your daily water intake goals?…I vote no. Don’t get me wrong, I love my teas, kombuchas and fun adaptogenic drinks with medicinal mushroom and herb extracts ‘cause I’m a plant and health nerd. However, most of those drinks, while they are definitely beneficial to our health and serve their own purposes, are not hydrating. They cannot replace drinking regular ol’ high quality H2O. (Y’all knew I was going to throw a “Waterboy” reference in this post at some point, right? I couldn’t resist) In fact many of those types of drinks are actually diuretic, causing us to lose water. This means they have the opposite effect that we are going for when we are talking about getting the optimal water content daily. And don’t even get me started on soda, “sports drinks,” alcoholic beverages and coffee. They belong nowhere near a conversation about hydration and water intake. I do love that the trend has shifted toward flavored sparkling water replacing soda for many people, but It’s still just not the same as drinking water. Just. Drink. Water.

Does the quality of the water we drink matter? Yes. Does that mean we should be spending a ton of money on cases and cases of bottled water? Absolutely not. Please don’t! Not only is bottled water devastating some of our planet’s precious ecosystems, most of it is not even close to quality or even what it’s advertised to be. In fact, most bottled water is up to 25% tap water! Testing has shown that some bottled water contains chemicals and bacteria worse than what’s in tap water including dioxin, BPA, benzene, trihalomethanes, arsenic, plastic particles, fertilizers, and industrial chemicals. Yikes!

So with all this said, we have to…well, actually, get to decide where to get our water and how much to drink. My theory is just to keep it super simple.

Here are 10 of my guidelines, tips and tricks to keep my quality water intake flowing.

1. 1. Know your water intake goal. My recommendation to all my clients, no matter what they are coming to me for is: drink half your weight in ounces of water every day. I got this Idea from Rachel Hollis in the book “Girl, Wash Your Face.” I love it because it’s easy math, it should be relatively simple to track, and it makes your water experience customized to your bio-individuality. The 8 glass rule is ok too, but I dont think it’s enough for most people, so I like this better. I am 175 lbs which means I need to be drinking 87.5 oz of water every day…so I round that up to 90 oz. 8 glasses is only 64 oz.
      Here’s my recommendation for tracking your water: get a quality stainless steel water bottle and keep it with you. Know how many times you need to fill it up each day to hit that amount of water and make it a habit. See? Simple.
   2. Start and end your day with water. Before you have a cup of coffee, or tea, or even magnesium or supplements, drink water. Not just a sip, drink 8 oz of water before putting anything else in your body. Every. Single. Day. Also, the last thing in your body before bed should be water. Not too much that you’re getting up to go to the bathroom an hour after hitting the hay, but definitely plenty so that you feel sufficiently hydrated. This one tends to be a little more intuitive being that most of us have a sip of water after brushing our teeth, but maybe take a few sips or even get wild and have a half a glass.
   3. Spread out your water intake. I like to think of this as my “water flow.” Keep it flowing. Sometimes my favorite thing in the world is to chug a ton of water, but water does its job best when it’s constantly being replenished in our bodies. Plus if I have a craving for water like that, it’s usually a sign that I’m a little, or a lot dehydrated. So spread it out. If you need to start setting a timer to drink a few swallows every 15 minutes or so, do it. But make it habitual. Before you know it, your body will catch on and you will be reaching for your water bottle frequently without even thinking about it.
   4. Look at your pee. Your pee should not smell (unless you had asparagus for dinner) and it should be light yellow or pretty close to clear. We’ve all heard this one before, but it’s another guideline that is super factual. If there’s a significant amount of color to your urine, or it has an odor, you are dehydrated.
   5. Drink quality water. Tap water is full of crap like chemicals, traces of pharmaceutical drugs, fertilizer, pesticides, fluoride, chlorine and myriad other things that do not belong in our beautiful body systems. And as mentioned before, bottled water quality is hit or miss. So do yourself a favor and get a home filtration system. Here are a few recommendations:
      • • reverse osmosis system
        • gravity fed water filter
        • refillable jugs from a trusted source
        • and worst case scenario a simple refrigerator water filter pitcher. They get the particulates out but most of the time can’t clean out the chemicals.
   6. Add minerals back into your water. When we filter and purify tap water it strips it of all the gross stuff in there, but it also strips it of the natural mineral content that Pachamam put in there for us and that is really beneficial. You win some and you lose some, right? Luckily we can add some minerals back into our water by simply adding a couple dashes of quality (buy the good stuff) Himalayan salt into our filtered water. This is a trick I learned from Darin Olien’s book “Super Life.” Hymilean pink salt is procured from rocks rather than sea water so it contains many of the earth minerals that we strip out of water when we purify it. Sea salt is wonderful for many reasons too, so use it in your cooking for sure, but earth salts are what we want to put back into our water.
   7. Cook with the same water you drink. Making soup or boiling pasta with water containing chemicals like chlorine makes as little sense as drinking it, but most people don’t really think about it. So there’s your heads up.
   8. Have your water close by at all times. I like to have a full water bottle or a water glass at my desk, by my bed, in my truck, with my gym shoes and wherever else it’s easy to grab it. My house is like the one in that M. Night Shyamalan movie from the early 2000’s movie, “Signs”. There are glasses of water in every room. If there is water close at hand I will drink it- and it will probably save my life, not necessarily by “swinging away” and hitting the water glasses at aliens with a baseball bat, but the water is still saving my life. Sorry for the spoiler if you haven’t seen that movie.
   9. Keep it simple. Give yourself some grace. Allow time to develop good habits around drinking water. I wholeheartedly believe that society and the “health industry” puts so much pressure on leading what they want us to believe is a healthy life, and a lot of that is to sell us something. Enter bottled water. My goal with this blog post is to give you a little info so that you can start to make your own intuitively guided decisions around the water you drink. So take this info, and take it one day at a time. If you have a day here and there where you don’t hit your water intake goals, oh well. You get a fresh new day tomorrow.
   10. Be grateful. If you are reading this, chances are you live in a part of the world where we get to even have a choice about the water we are drinking. That’s pretty freakin’ rad, and 100% something to have gratitude for.

Well, there you have it. Water actually is life. Without water there is no life. If you want to live a better, more vibrant life, I say, start with water.

Thanks for the read. If you have questions, or want to connect, please hit me up. Until next time…

I raise my water bottle to you and your health.
Cheers.