Water, How I Love Thee

One aspect of the High Performance Body Recomposition project which I am doing, is that all 16 or so of us participants, along with the two online coaches, are together in a secret group on Facebook.  This does provide a useful means for the coaches to share files regarding our workouts and diets, and for everyone to have an opportunity to learn from one individual's question.  The disadvantage, as far as I'm concerned, is that there are a few highly vocal individuals who like to step in and make my question about them, or who are trying to be at the head of this imaginary class by somehow finishing the second workout of week two before week one is over.  (Seriously, are you lifting weights every day?  Did you not read the bit where the two plans are classified as "three workouts per week" or "four workouts per week"?)

As I mentioned, one of our tasks for month one is to establish our maintenance level of eating: the number of calories that will sustain us at our current weight, performing the workouts as delineated.  A couple women (there is only one man in the group) were thinking that they'd need to add in some calories because in the first week they'd lost...drum roll...one pound.

*Sigh*

Do you know that two cups of water weigh one pound?  So if I chug a pint of beer after a run (The Judge has declared that beer is the perfect post-workout recovery drink), I will increase my weight by a pound.  Or if I don't drink very much in the evening and sleep in a warm room for eight hours, sweating and respiring all that time, I can wake up a pound lighter than when I started.  Or, frankly, if I have an epic trip to the loo.  One pound of difference, in the short term, does not signify weight loss to me.

Or perhaps my thinking is just flawed.  When I stepped on the scale at the gym this morning, it indicated that my mass versus the earth's gravitational pull was producing a weight of 147.0 pounds.  This is after consistently weighing in at 150.0 pounds for all of last week.  Did I think to myself, "Hey--I've lost three pounds.  Better up my calories a bit."  Nope.  I thought, "Hey--I've lost three pounds.  I must be a little dehydrated."  Warm night, peed a lot yesterday, sweated during my morning treadmill workout => dehydrated.

However, if my weight stays at 147.0 every time I weigh myself for the next couple of weeks, then I'll believe that it represents actual weight lost, and I'll need to add some calories.

In other news, you may think that water is the best liquid for hydration...and you'd be right.  Yet another study, published by the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, has demonstrated that "neither coconut water nor sports drinks were better than water in hydrating young men after hourlong workouts."  I learned this over at Marion Nestle's site Food Politics.  Her write-up is here, and the original paper is available (free access!) here.

This morning, I spent some time hydrating myself with my favorite water of choice, tea.  :)