Hydration Nation

Hello Fellow Woggers,

Hard to believe it is Thursday already. My wife pointed out to me that I am not doing a perfect job at proofreading. I hope no one is turned off by any mistakes. I usually read over it a few times, but it's hard looking at your own material. So I apologize and will work on it. If any of you find grammar mistakes terribly offending make sure you read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It is a wonderful book.

So today I wanted to talk to you about hydration. I am going to try and not sound too much like a curmudgeon, but I feel that may be a hard task. Maybe I should just say I am old school. Either way, I don't fully understand our nation's obsession with hydration.

Don't get me wrong. Drinking enough water, especially when exercising or trying to lose weight, is very important. But it seems like it has become more than just getting enough to drink. It's almost like a status. "How much water did you drink today?" "Six gallons." "Dude, you rock."

Water should be a necessity for life, not a symbol of your dominance in the world of healthy living. To paraphrase the comedian Lewis Black, I think the problem came when we as a society replaced the word "thirsty" with "hydration." When I was young we would say things like, "I'm thirsty." Now kids say things like,"I need to hydrate." Is it any wonder we get softer as a nation?

The other thing that bothers me is how we drink water hydrate. We do it out of fancy bottles. Or cheap bottles. Here are some of ours:

When I was a kid we used these weird things called glasses. What you did was fill them up with water. Sometimes we were having too much fun playing outside, so much we didn't want to come inside to drink a glass of water hydrate ourselves, so we would drink water hydrate from a garden hose. And somehow we lived to tell about it. For our younger readers let me explain how this worked.

Once upon a time, water was basically free and it came right into your house and you could go to the sink and drink the water.

And the water was good. Now we have to buy water in a bottle. But you know what? Almost all the bottled water you buy comes from the municipal water supply. That's right. Look on the label of a bottle of Purified Water. Some guy at the Purified Water Bottling Plant here in Houston fills bottles from a faucet just like this one (probably larger) and sells it to you. You could just get it for cheap from your faucet like the one above. The only difference is that they run it through a filter process. And that does make it taste better. But you can do the same thing with a filtration pitcher.

The nice thing about this is not only are you saving money, but those plastic bottle are bad for the environment. So save money and save the earth some wear and tear and use a pitcher, your faucet and a glass.

Ok, off my rant. Many of you are wondering, what does this have to do with not being thirsty staying hydrated while Wogging. Where is the discussion on Gatorade vs. Cytomax? What are carbs and sugars and electrolytes doing in my drink? Well, guess what I have found out during my research for this? Unless you are going to exercise for more than 90 minutes or are competing or are a professional athlete, you only really need water.

What? But Mike said if I want to be like him I need to drink Gatorade. True, but if you really want to Be Like Mike, you also need to be a lot more than hydrated. Strangely enough, the commercials are not telling us the truth (gasp!). Water is enough for most of us. If you are doing an endurance race or doing a workout for 90 minutes or more, you will need to replace electrolytes. For example, during my half marathon, I will be drinking a sports drink. However, I could probably just drink water and live to tell about it. Remember, generations of people lived before sports drinks and did just fine. We can too. (My legal team has advised me to state I am not a doctor and if any of you pass out from a lack of electrolytes you can't sue me.

But wait, some of you are thinking. This is the worst summer of our lives, surely we need to drink sports drinks due to that. I have two answers. 1) From what I have read, no you just need to drink more but it can still be water. 2) That's why I am working out in the air conditioned gym.

For a good article on thirst hydration check out this article in Runner's World http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-242-302--10086-1-1X2X3X4-5,00.html

Have a wonderful week, Woggers, and to paraphrase the World's Most Interesting Man, "Stay hydrated my friends."