I’ve been reading Quench by Dr. Dana Cohen and Gina Bria for our third pillar of energy, hydration. It’s a great book and I won’t spoil the book review I’m writing by telling you too much right now, but I did want to mention one thing I just had to start experimenting with before I’ve even finished reading the book.
Hydration isn’t about drinking more water – it’s about eating more water! Fruits and vegetables contain a form of water that is more readily absorbable by our bodies than a simple glass of water. This shift in our diet focus is a game changer! We all know that 75% of us are chronically dehydrated and how boring it can be to find the time to chug 8 glasses of water a day. If we can instead focus on adding some hydrating food to our plates, we can suddenly rehydrate, reenergize, and reduce our caloric intake while feeling fuller. It’s a quadruple win!
I got so excited about this (as you can probably tell), I had to immediately check my diet and see where I could insert more hydrating foods. Dr. Dana and Gina have a helpful chart in the book that shows the top 12 hydrating veggies and fruits, which I downloaded and cross-referenced with my Viome results for superfoods and foods to avoid. Here is what I came up with:
The highlighted foods in green are my superfoods (according to Viome). The foods crossed out are the foods that I should probably avoid, due to my individual gut biome and mitochondrial situation. And the foods I put a check mark next to are the ones I would just enjoy adding to my diet more often.
I printed out this list and put it on the fridge for my wife and I to ponder. The book Quench recommends having a morning smoothie to get more hydrating foods into your day. I’ve been trying the intermittent fasting method of only eating between 11AM and 7PM to burn more trunk fat, but since I’ve recently reached my initial weight loss goal, I could add a healthy breakfast smoothie back into my routine.
I’m definitely going to up my salads at dinner and continue to enjoy apples and grapes daily for lunch and snacks. But I will report back soon on how this experiment is going with hydration.
Good luck with your own quest for more energy and I hope this helps!
