How much water should a male athlete drink a day

Whether you’re a serious athlete or simply exercise for recreation, it’s important to stay hydrated. Good hydration means getting the right amount of water before, during, and after exercise. Water regulates your body temperature and lubricates your joints. It helps transport nutrients to give you energy and keep you healthy. If you’re not hydrated, your body can’t perform at its highest level. You may feel tired, have muscle cramps, dizziness, or other serious symptoms.

Path to improved health

A simple way to make sure you’re staying properly hydrated is to check your urine. If your urine is usually colorless or light yellow, you are most likely well hydrated. Dark yellow or amber-colored urine can be a sign of dehydration.

How much water should I drink while exercising?

There are no exact rules for how much water to drink while exercising, because everyone is different. You need to consider factors including your sweat rate, the heat and humidity in your environment, and how long and hard you are exercising.

The American Council on Exercise has suggested the following basic guidelines for drinking water before, during, and after exercise:

• Drink 17 to 20 ounces of water 2 to 3 hours before you start exercising.
• Drink 8 ounces of water 20 to 30 minutes before you start exercising or during your warm-up.
• Drink 7 to 10 ounces of water every 10 to 20 minutes during exercise.
• Drink 8 ounces of water no more than 30 minutes after you exercise.

Athletes may want to measure how much fluid they lose during exercise to get a more specific measurement of how much water to drink (16 to 24 ounces of water for every pound of body weight lost).

What about sports drinks?

For most people, water is all that is needed to stay hydrated. However, if you will be exercising at a high intensity for longer than an hour, a sports drink may be helpful. The calories, potassium, and other nutrients in sports drinks can provide energy and electrolytes to help you perform for a longer period of time.

Choose a sports drink wisely. They are often high in calories from added sugar and may contain high levels of sodium. Also, check the serving size. One bottle may contain several servings. If you drink the entire bottle, you may need to double or triple the amounts given on the nutrition facts label. Some sports drinks contain caffeine. If you consume a sports drink that contains caffeine, be careful not to add too much caffeine to your diet. Caffeine may cause a diuretic effect on your body. This means that you may have to urinate more often.

Things to consider

Dehydration happens when you lose more fluid than you drink. When your body doesn’t have enough water, it can’t work properly. Dehydration can range from mild to severe. Symptoms of dehydration can include the following:

• Dizziness or lightheaded feeling.
• Nausea or vomiting.
• Muscle cramps.
• Dry mouth.
• Lack of sweating.
• Hard, fast heartbeat.

Symptoms of severe dehydration can include mental confusion, weakness, and loss of consciousness. You should get emergency medical attention immediately if you have any of these symptoms.

What is heat illness?

Heat illness can occur when your body is dehydrated and can’t cool itself effectively during exercise in hot or humid weather. There are 3 stages of heat illness:

1. heat cramps
2. heat exhaustion
3. heatstroke

Symptoms of heat cramps include painful muscle spasms in the legs, stomach, arms, or back. Symptoms of heat exhaustion are more serious. They can include faint or weak feelings, nausea, headache, fast heartbeat, and low blood pressure.

The most serious heat-related illness is heatstroke. Symptoms can include high body temperature (higher than 104°F), fast heartbeat, flushed skin, fast breathing, and possibly even delirium, loss of consciousness, or seizures. You should get emergency medical attention immediately if you experience any of the symptoms of heatstroke. Untreated heatstroke can lead to death.

How much water is too much?

This depends on your body and the kind of activity you are doing. Talk to your family doctor if you have questions about the right amount of water to drink while exercising.

When to see a doctor

You should see a doctor immediately if you have symptoms of dehydration, heat exhaustion, or heatstroke. You should also see a doctor if you have symptoms of a rare condition called hyponatremia. These include confusion, headache, vomiting, and swelling of the hands and feet.

Just how much water should you drink on a daily basis? Does the food you eat count toward this amount? Do you need as much water when exercising in the cold as you would in the heat? Will drinking water speed weight loss? Does dehydration affect athletic performance? If you’ve ever had questions like these about hydration, read on to find out why it is so important to keep properly hydrated.

We’ve all heard the advice to drink eight glasses of water a day. We’ve probably even told our clients to follow this standardized and unproven advice. But how much we actually need to drink is very individualized and depends on many factors, including gender, age, health issues, environment, and of course, activity levels.(1,2).

Generally, the recommended fluid intake for men is 125-130 oz/day (approx. 16 cups) and 91-95 oz/day (approx. 12 cups) for women (1,2). Fluids from all food and beverage sources count towards these amounts. Typically about 20% will come from foods (especially fruits and vegetables) and the other 80% from beverages (including caffeinated beverages) (1,2).

Learn more about hydration by checking out this guide to hydration.

Why is it so important to get enough fluids?

The human body is approximately 60% water (1). We can only survive a few days without water. The fluid levels in our body are constantly fluctuating as we lose or gain water. Water is key to our biological functions, including maintaining our core temperature, transporting nutrients to our cells, removing waste products and keeping our pH levels balanced (1-3).

Water is lost through:

• Sweating
• Urination/excretion
• Insensible water loss-continuous evaporation from the skin and lungs (e.g., perspiration and respiration)

Water is gained through:

• Food
• Beverages
• Metabolic processes (oxidation of protein, carbohydrates, and fat)

Monitoring Fluids the Easy Way

A simple way to monitor fluid status is to evaluate the color of urine throughout the day. If it is a pale yellow it likely indicates a well-hydrated state. If it is dark in color it probably indicates more fluids are needed. Another method is to weigh-in before and after a workout, replacing the weight difference with fluids. Thirst, obviously, is another indicator that the body needs fluids.

Peak Performance Sidelined by Dehydration

A dehydrated athlete probably won’t perform at peak levels. Dehydration tolerance is just as individualized as hydration needs (1). Performance wise, dehydration can decrease strength by 2%, power by 3%, and high-intensity endurance by about 10% (1).

Some of the reasons dehydration affects performance, especially for endurance activities combined with heat, include reduced plasma blood volume (leading to reduced stroke volume, increased heart rate), a decrease in blood flow to the skin (reducing the sweating response and heat dissipation), and an increase in core temperature (4,5).

Dehydration also has cognitive consequences, negatively affecting response time, coordination, tracking, short-term memory, attention, and mental focus (1). Feelings of fatigue take over faster and more recent research has even shown that dehydration increased brain activity related to painful stimuli (6).

So how much should an athlete consume to keep hydrated? The following chart lists recommendations from the American Dietetic Association, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine’s Fluid Replacement Guidelines (1):

If exercising less than an hour, water will generally meet hydration needs. For longer duration exercise, especially in the heat, a sports beverage will help replace the fluids and electrolytes lost.

Exercising in the Heat or Cold

As most of us have experienced, exercising in the heat increases sweat production. Evaporation of sweat is the body’s key mechanism for staying cool in hot environments. Maintaining ideal hydration levels typically requires an increase in fluid consumption, and potentially the addition of sodium and potassium to replace electrolytes lost in the sweat (1-3). (For more on exercising in the heat, click the link.)

But what about the cold? We tend to not think about dehydration as a factor in colder environments. Though our bodies are trying to conserve heat, sweating still occurs, especially with insulated layers of clothing. Colder environments have been shown to blunt the thirst sensation (7). Being in the cold can also increase urine output (diuresis) as fluids are pulled from the extremities toward the core (vasoconstriction) to maintain warmth, in addition to increased respiratory loss of fluids to dry air and/or altitude (8).

Water for Weight Loss

Can water help as an intervention to weight loss? It can definitely help to reduce overall calorie consumption if it replaces high calorie beverages. It can also help by adding feelings of fullness, aiding in digestion, slightly increasing metabolism, or avenge feelings of thirst that can often be mistaken for hunger (9). More recently, a study aimed to discover if a pre-meal glass of water would be a successful intervention as part of a weight loss diet.

The researchers found that the participants on a calorie restricted diet who drank +500 ml water before each meal lost more weight than those on the calorie restricted diet alone (10).

Too Much of a Good Thing: Hyponatremia

Hyponatremia, or water intoxication, is a dangerous condition that occurs when there is an excess of fluids consumed (exceeding the kidneys ability to quickly excrete) and an excessive loss or dilution of sodium (1-3). Endurance athletes (e.g., long distance runners, triathletes, cyclists) can be at risk for hyponatremia, especially if they are not replacing sodium lost in sweat and over hydrating during an event (1,2). Women and children are also more susceptible to hyponatremia due to their lower sweat rates and lower total body water (1,2). Unfortunately, hyponatremia has had fatal results not only during endurance events, but hazing incidences and other types of non-exercise contests as well (3).

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