The Ideal Amount of Water to Drink Daily

Next question is from VaneWest4. How much water should you drink daily? Is a gallon really necessary? The gallon number is kind of arbitrary. I don't want to say totally, because there's some stuff to back it. But it's kind of arbitrary. That was promoted by the, I guess the muscle building community. But I will say this about water. Okay. I had no idea as a young trainer, the impact that optimal hydration versus minimal hydration had on the body. Most people are not, quote unquote, dehydrated. I hate when they use that word. Like, oh, you need more water because you're dehydrated. Well, not really. You've got enough water to be okay. But then there's a level that's more optimal. And what you notice is your skin changes. Joint pain often gets affected. Energy. Energy goes up. This is a big one. This one really tripped me out. I had clients where, you know, luckily I worked with a health practitioner that was very wellness focused at one point. This was before I was really into wellness. And I would hear her tell her clients this over and over again. And then I'd hear the clients come in and say, oh my gosh, I've got way more energy because I'm drinking more water. And I remember the first couple times I heard it, it was like, yeah, it's probably something else. Yeah, it's probably whatever. After about the fifth or sixth person, I said, I wonder if there's something to this. Let me pay attention to water intake with my clients. And I would do things like have them get a container of water where they could measure it. And we would measure out, you know, between half a gallon to a gallon, depending on the person and their size. And I'd say, okay, I want you to make sure to drink four of these every single day. So now the person's aware. And they would come back and say the same thing. I have more energy. I feel so much better. My elbow pain feels a lot better. No more mental fog. This has a huge, optimal hydration has a huge impact on all that stuff. I noticed for the pumps, when I worked at, I mean, here's the deal. Carbs, you know, pre-workout supplements, Arganine, Citrulline. I mean, you name it, I've tried them all. Nothing gave me better pumps than just having a lot of water or adequate water or optimized water intake before my workout. So this has a pretty big impact. I'm glad you set the table like that because I actually, I get really annoyed by the trainers that talk ---- about this because this is one of those things, very similar to the conversation we had earlier in this podcast where generally speaking, it's pretty damn good advice. But you have some of these nerds that want to be, that's not true. And based off of their lean body mass, their activity level, there should be this many ounces based on, it's like, dude, you obviously haven't trained that many people before because ain't nobody sitting down and calculating that all out. And very few people even keep track of how many glasses they do in the day either. It's much easier to give a client a very basic goal or even have them, like I like to do, carry this gallon around or half gallon and you have to drink it and go through two. And you're not going to drown drinking one gallon of water. So it's a good goal. If you come a little bit under that, is it going to be a huge difference? No, it's not. But in my experience, almost every client I ever trained didn't drink enough water. And when we started drinking more water, we noticed these things. We noticed skin, we noticed hair, we noticed these things start to get better. Also, I even noticed with clients, the achiness in their joints and feeling tight, I noticed it lubricated their ability to move better. It saw things like that start to go away. And then you talk about pumps. There's lots of benefits to it. And then there's this side in the fitness space that loves to take this old adage of drink a gallon of water and then they want to ---- all over it because the science doesn't support exactly that. It's like, dude, what you're doing is you're going to tell a majority of the masses who aren't drinking enough water, oh, it's not a big deal because this whole drinking a gallon is just this made-up number, so I'm not going to worry about it. Yeah, the number is arbitrary, but the focus on it is really important. To be able to be purposeful throughout your day of seeking out water, we just know all those benefits that we've been listing off. Those are substantial benefits that you're going to receive from just intentionally trying to increase the amount of water that you're consuming every day. So to have some kind of goal, so if you can figure that out, like you said, even if it's a half gallon or the gallon, whatever the marker is, you should be constantly thinking that in the back of your mind. It's when you're not thinking about it, now all of a sudden things start to decline. And guess what? This is an important part of training. Yeah, you know how much it affects cravings and hunger for some people? Yeah, that too. Because they're not drinking enough water. You know, I would say if you're the kind of average person and you're working out and you're kind of getting into it, half a gallon is a nice place to start. If you eat a lot of protein, you're a fitness fanatic, you carry a lot of muscle, then probably more towards a gallon. Now, those are again, those are general numbers. Yeah, I mean, obviously talking to a 115-pound woman versus a 260-pound man, of course there's difference for RDA type stuff, right? But here's the deal. One gallon is just not a bad, I mean, one gallon is going to cover most people. Is it a little more than some people are going to eat? Yeah, but are you going to drown from having a half a gallon too much? No. So to me, it's good advice. It's not something you should get freaked out about if you barely miss your one gallon, but I think it's a good generic target. You want to know what else is funny? Do you know how many times digestive issues, especially constipation, is solved by drinking more water? Sure. Literally. Constipate, like I've had clients where this was, because I had someone who did gut health in my studio, and they would work on my clients along with me, and I'd do the training and they'd do the other stuff. And they would tell me afterwards, what's the recommendation? I'd say, well, I'm just going to start drinking more water. And I'm like, but you've had, your constipation issues have been with you for years. I know, but they want me to drink more water. All right, let's see what happens. And it was like 30% of the time. It was like three out of 10 people that solved their constipation issue. And I remember being blown away by it. Remember, there's adequate and there's optimal. Just like with protein, if you have about 60 grams of protein a day, you're going to be okay, you're not going to die. Is that optimal for building muscle and performance? For most people, no. For most people, it's much more than that. Same thing with water. You're probably not drinking too little to where ----'s going to go wrong, but then there's optimal, in which you'll notice some benefits.