A SHORT COURSE IN CONTROLLING WATER
WE ARE ALL SACKS OF SALT WATER
The human body is largely a sack of seawater with some structural elements to help hold it together. One expert has pointed out that our ancestors emerged from the ocean to live on land and took the ocean with them – inside their bodies. Up to 60% of your body is water. Some 90% of your body weight is water.
Proper hydration is necessary for good health and optimal physical performance. However, bodybuilders trying to get in shape need to be very careful about excessive water retention, especially water held under the skin. This can kill definition and make months of dieting go to waste.
Simply not drinking fluids is not an answer. Aside from the obvious health and performance problems, when your system senses you are dehydrated it works to hold onto water as much as possible to avoid problems. So you end up not only dehydrated but holding water under the skin – the worst of both possible worlds. So controlling your water becomes a case of needing proper fluid management to get the best of both worlds – a healthy, hydrated body that looks lean, hard and defined.
NORMAL HYDRATION
Water is an absolutely essential nutrient. For example, water flushes toxins out of vital organs, carries nutrients to your cells and provides a moist environment for ear, nose and throat tissues.
For the most part, bodybuilders don’t have to worry a lot about water except during immediate pre-contest preparation. There are many who think there is some advantage to excessive fluid intake – drinking many liters of water a day. You see them walking around the gym with big plastic containers of water. However, while human needs for fluid vary depending on activity, climate, body size and gender, drinking about three liters of fluid a day (including water, soft drinks, coffee, juice – plus the fluid you obtain from food) is roughly sufficient. Drinking excessive amounts of fluid don’t help you metabolize fat or improve your athletic performance. The more fluid you ingest, the more your body has to excrete it. You can end up spending a lot of time in the bathroom.
By the way, a few people drinking huge amounts of fluid have actually drowned, as their lung tissue gradually absorbed more and more excess water. That is unlikely to happen, but does demonstrate that there is a limit in terms of fluid intake.
CONTEST PREP
In terms of bodybuilding, all that really counts is how you look the day or days of the contest. If you can follow a program that allows you to stay in great shape for days after to shoot photos, fine. But judges go by what they see on stage, not what you looked like days earlier or will look like tomorrow.
So limiting your water intake a week before a competition or even longer is useless in terms of contest prep. The fact is that water cycles in and out of the body fairly quickly. It is easy to verify this by weighing yourself several times a day. It is easy to see a variation of several pounds – which is obviously not caused by gaining or losing fat. Limit your fluid intake for a day or two and you’ll see a subsequent change on the scales. But this will go away fairly shortly once you start drinking normally again. And as we’ve seen, once you are dehydrated the response of the body is to hold water to protect itself. So you end up with too little water in your body, but too much retained under the skin. Not a good contest strategy.
CYCLING WATER IN AND OUT
Since you only need to be “dry” for the time you’re on stage, it makes sense not to reduce your water intake until the day or the night before an event. In general, the more you drink the more you urinate. So if you continue to take in fluids up until the time of the contests your body will eliminate fluid as fast as your take in it. But it takes time for the body to recognize when your fluid intake has become restricted. During that time it will continue to eliminate fluid as it has been. So if you limit your fluids for a 12 or 16 hour period before the contest, your body will continue to excrete water during this period resulting in flushing a lot of water out of the body and out from under the skin.
But this can be taken too far. A lot of bodybuilders will stop drinking water on Friday night and then not drink very much all day Saturday before and during a show. This is too much of a good think. The body begins to sense dehydration, such down the excretion of fluid and you risk problems like excessive cramping on stage. How often do you see bodybuilders in a lineup during a contest drinking lots of fluid? Why do they think there will be no holding of subcutaneous water at that point, but if they had started drinking (at least to some degree) and hour earlier it would have ruined their hardness and definition?
No, the better strategy is to limit fluid intake overnight and then gradually increase water intake during the day of the show. Not huge amounts, but enough to avoid dehydration and to preclude physical weakness and cramping.
SODIUM
Water goes in and out of the cells depending on a balance between the sodium and potassium present. It is true that an imbalance of sodium in your system can cause increased water retention. Which means that you should avoid intake of large amounts of salt – for example, table salt and most fast and processed foods that rely on fat, sugar and salt for taste. But the normal amounts of sodium in “real” food are not usually a problem. If you are drinking enough fluid any excess sodium will usually be washed out of your system over time.
When you are withhold fluids, even for a very short time, sodium becomes more important. You should certainly do your best to limit sodium when you are not drinking much. However, you need to avoid an actual condition of sodium deprivation. According to Wikipedia, “Symptoms of hyponatremia (sodium deprivation) include nausea and vomiting, headache, confusion, lethargy, fatigue, loss of appetite, restlessness and irritability, muscle weakness, spasms, or cramps, seizures, and decreased consciousness or coma.”
Athletes engaged in heavy and prolonged exercise, especially in hot weather, can suffer from both dehydration and hyponatremia.
POTASSIUM
The normal western diet tends to be very high in sodium and low in potassium. Most of us don’t get enough of this mineral. A situation made worse during extreme dieting. The concentration differences between potassium and sodium across cell membranes create an electrochemical gradient known as the membrane potential. This affects electrical activity in the body and also the degree to which water flows in or out of the cells. A high ratio of sodium causes water retention, while more potassium has the opposite effect.
A lot of bodybuilders have learned over time that potassium supplements during pre-contest prep tend to limit water under the skin. This is true. But again, everything has to be done in moderation. There are many causes of bodybuilding writhing in pain backstage because too much potassium, along with dehydration, has caused server muscle cramps.
SUMMARY:
1. Drink plenty of water. All the time. If you wait until just before a contest to increase your water intake you won’t get the full benefit of this hydration.
2. A fully-hydrated body (1) has bigger muscles, (2) processes glucose into muscle glycogen more effectively, and (3) regularly flushes any excess water out of the system.
3. Taking large amounts of excess sodium (a piece of fast-food chicken frequently contains 800 to 900 miligrams of salt, or even more) is bad for your health. However, the natural sodium in your food is necessary for good health and will not result in water-retention as long as you remain fully hydrated.
4. Some potassium taken as a supplement as part of an overall vitamin and mineral supplementation program is okay. But (1) do not take potassium in excess, and (2) never take in on an empty stomach.
5. You can reduce (but not totally eliminate) your water intake the night before a contest to insure that your body has time to flush out excess water overnight, but you should then resume drinking at least small amounts of water during the day of the contest to avoid going into a state of dehydration.
6. Cutting back on sodium the day before a contest (just to be sure that you don’t experience any temporary water imbalance) is acceptable, but this process shouldn’t be begun any earlier nor should you continue to restrict your sodium for any length of time afterwards.
To read more about the importance of water in your training, click here!
Photos courtesy of ThinkStock