Water Retention

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I have been suffering from water retention recently. It took me a while to work it out primarily as I had put the aching down to the increased amount of running that I have been doing now that I am training again.

Symptoms

Swelling of my feet, calves and hands

Weight gain

A cramp like feeling in my calves and feet in particular

General tiredness

Cure

Weird as it may seem for a problem called Water Retention the cure is effectively to drink more water, although that in itself can cause a problem. This is because the lack of sufficient water intake means too many toxins are retained in the body.

The recommended daily intake of water is 2 litres, raising to 3 litres in a hot climate like Spain in the summer. Add to that the fact that I need to replace the fluids lost by sweating when running.

They say that for every kilo of weight lost through sweat you need to drink another litre. Well I am losing over 1.5 kilos a run in sweat at the moment, which requires in excess of 1.5 litres of water.

So in total I need to drink at least 4.5 litres of water a day, call it 5 to allow for the additional sweat lost when doing my weights and pilates etc. This equates to 20 large glasses of water.

Now for the added complication – as you sweat you lose essential minerals e.g. salt, potassium etc. so these need replacing. But drinking so much water in a day means that I am diluting a lot of the remaining minerals at the same time – sort of a catch 22.

At the moment I have just been drinking the revised water target for a couple of days, and adding some salt to certain foods. We don’t cook with salt or use it much at all which is a little strange given how much salt the traditional Spanish diet has (this could be one reason why!). So far I have seen some good improvement. I have lost 3 lbs in weight in two days. Given the amount of additional training I am doing and the diet I am on I would have expected to have lost a reasonable amount so far this month so the fact that I am now just a few lbs lighter than at the beginning of the month would indicate that I am still retaining a lot of fluid.

My calves and feet are still swollen and ache, but another contributing factor to that is probably that I am spending so much time sat at my desk at the moment I am not giving the circulation a chance to work.

I have just bought some isotonic drinks so will drink a litre of that after every run, and need to work out which foods to eat more of to replace the lost minerals. I don’t like bananas at all but eat one a day and have a horrible feeling I am going to have to start eating two or more a day!

As you would expect Sands is on the case with the diet in particular. Naturally a lot of fruit and veg will continue to be consumed to help flush out the toxins.

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