Not Just a Man's World

I had a full day of meetings on Wednesday last week so I failed to follow my own advice about making sure you drink enough throughout the day.

When I fail to drink enough water in a day, I notice the following problems the next day:

• Dry throat as if I’ve got a cold coming on – probably caused by the air conditioning in the office, it lasts for the whole day.
• Dry sensation on my hands – I hate this feeling of papery skin.  I lose some of the feedback from the nerves on my fingertips, as if I was wearing a thin pair of gloves.  This can take a couple of days to go again.
• Dry lips – for the whole of the next day I keep licking my lips.
• Slight halitosis – which is really not what you want when you’re working in close proximity with people all day.
• Bloating of the abdomen – This is my most hated side effect.  It can take anything up to 3 or 4 days to go again and when you have my build around the waist and hips it really shows from the side.  Here’s why:

Swollen abdomen after a day of poor hydration

Quite a bit flatter after 4 days of careful rehydration, though this still isn't as good as it was before

Interestingly, I often read on Figure Athlete about the use of water depletion to get the body looking extra lean just before a competition.  I can see the motivation behind this – I certainly look my leanest first thing in the morning (when I haven’t drunk anything for about 12 hours and the skin is tight to my muscles) but how do they avoid the abdominal bloating?

Well, honestly I don’t know.  There’s a summary of Valerie Waugaman’s water/sodium loading and depleting plan for the last week before the Arnold Classic figure competition one year in a Figure Athlete article.  However, all I can work out from it is that she’s using a diuretic (dandelion) and is down to 8oz of water on the last couple of days.

When I said I hadn’t drunk enough at work, I meant I’d had 2 litres in the day rather than the 5 or 6 I would usually get through (on a standard day).  And I only had one day like that to end up with abdominal bloating and all those other symptoms.  8oz of water is just crazy.

Then I came across a Q&A session with Terry Stokes on Figure Coach and he has a bit of a rant about using water depletion (see point 7).  Terry’s also done a blog post in more detail on the carb loading/water depletion technique.

I have to say that, given my experience with abdominal bloating, I would be more inclined to agree with Terry than the guys on Figure Athlete.  The people who write on Figure Athlete train figure competitors regularly, so it must work for them, but for once I am inclined to listen to my body and believe it.

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned this week: listen to your body
2. Lessons learned this week: kitchen experiment accidents
3. Lessons learned this week: falling off the diet wagon
4. Lessons learned this week: incontinence