11 Ways to Improve Your Nutrition in 2011

As you may or may not know, I run a boot camp biz and monthly I do a nutrition call to support my boot campers.

You can’t out train a bad diet, so my job is to constantly provide good content to keep nutrition the focus so that my campers not only get into terrific shape, but they really ‘ change their shape’  through positive nutritional choices.

Here’ s an an interview that my nutritionist Zach and I did recently. We discuss 11 ways to give yourself a nutritional boost in 2011.

This is a little longer call, but well worth it. Take a listen:

http://206.144.47.82/fcc/cgi-bin/play.mp3/2183392500-1062137-17.mp3

There were a few comments regarding water consumption, so Zach wanted to clarify this for you:

I talked a lot about water consumption and how personally I had approached on 7 L of water. I want to advise everyone that you must be careful when changing your water consumption. Your kidneys can excrete (eliminate) about 1 L per hour. This number can vary with things like stress, exercise, etc. Surpassing this can cause extra stress on your kidney and result in an electrolyte imbalance. Reaching this point can cause a very risky situation known as water toxicity, water poisoning or hyponatremia.

Electrolytes are essential to conduct electrical transmissions in our body crucial for life.  When electrolytes become watered down (by overconsumption of water) functions in your body diminish. First signs of water toxicity are headaches, changes in behavior, confusion and drowsiness. This is followed by muscle weakness, cramping, nausea and vomiting. Further this goes into bradycardia or a reduced heart rate.

For most people water toxicity will not happen, this is very rare. Consuming 2-4 L over the course of a day will not result in this.

When I consumed the large amount of water I did, it was over the course of a 14 hour period (approx. 500 ml/hour).  The way my diet is set up, I consume a significant amount of electrolytes (Sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, chloride).