Odd way to begin an email, but you thought about it just now.
So? What’s the verdict?
As you are old enough to read this email, you’ve lived long enough to know that your urine changes color throughout the day from a cloudy gold, to yellow, to pale, to clear.
While there are a number of factors that can affect the color of urine, the most overwhelming factor is hydration!
Urine is waste metabolites from your body functioning suspended in water. Your body uses water to help you get rid of the waste. This makes it an easy means of spotting how hydrated you are.
The more yellow to cloudy gold your urine is, the less hydrated you are because you can actually “see” how saturated your urine is with waste.
The more clear it is, the more hydrated you are as your body has more excess water to get rid of.
Long story short, your pee needs to be clear at all times
Why does hydration matter? All of the BILLIONS of cells in your body undergo an uncountable number of processes at every moment. Water is in an ingredient in many of them, and creates the environment for all of them to occur.
Don’t worry, we aren’t about to have an organic chemistry course, it’s Friday after all.
But I want you to think about this.
Exercising forces all of your body to ramp up its processes. This requires a lot of water (and carbs).
When you are dehydrated, your muscles and other parts of your body use up so much water that guess what...your brain gets upset.
A quick search on brain energy use, you'll find it is 20% at rest. The squishy thing in your head uses $1 of energy for every $5. This means that it uses a lot of water. When your brain doesn’t have enough water (or carbs) it will SHUT YOU DOWN.
You’ll likely get some combination of light headed, excessively tired, bad decision making, nausea, get irritable, and be forced to stop and sit down.
Obviously, this will seriously impact the quality of your training session, practice, and of course competition.
So, drink enough water that your pee is clear and you’ll avoid a lot of headaches. Literally and from the frustration of poor performance and not feeling well.
If you’re a parent read this to your child. If you’re an athlete, send this to a teammate or someone you workout with.