Michelle Woodworth

Sounds crazy, right?  If you’re feeling bloated and retaining water, the last thing you would think to do is drink more water.  Seems more like an excess than a deficiency. However, water retention can just be your body’s way of telling you that it needs more water to function properly.

Every cell in your body requires water.  In fact, your body is basically two-thirds water (66%). Without it, most people would be dead within four days.  That should tell us right there that water ought to be our beverage of choice.

Under normal circumstances, our body loses about 2.8 quarts of water per day through urine, the skin, breath, and feces.  We get some water from the food we eat and the body can make make water from the metabolism of that food, which comes out to about 1.3 quarts.  That leaves the average person a deficit of 1.5 quarts per day, or about six glasses.  So you need six glasses of water each day just make up for what you lose.

Most sources say that you should drink eight glasses of water each day.  I’ve also heard that you should take your body weight and divide it in half and that’s how many ounces you should be drinking in a day.

As an indicator of whether your are getting enough water, monitor the color of your urine.  If it is strongly colored, you may not be drinking enough water (keep in mind that vitamin B2, riboflavin, colors the urine fluorescent yellow).  If it is always clear, you may be drinking too much water (did you know that was even possible?) .  Patrick Holford advises that your urine should be “a light, straw-colored yellow”.

Back to water retention.  When your body is constantly dehydrated, its defense mechanism kicks in and it starts storing water.  Drinking water on a regular basis will stop this cycle and your body can begin releasing retained water.  Just like that.

To make it easy on yourself, get a 32 ounce bottle and fill it twice a day.  Try to drink regularly throughout the day and not guzzle your last bottle right before bed or you’re sure to be up at least once during the night!

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Michelle Woodworth
Finishing up my eighth glass for today.

Fat is good for you!

Your brain is 60% fat.

Eating the right kind of fat is critical for optimal health.

Of course, the key words there are “right kind of fat”.  All too often, most of the fat in our diets comes from hard, saturated fats such as dairy products and meats.  But being fat-phobic and avoiding fats is really no better than eating the wrong kinds of fat.  Either way, you are depriving your body of necessary nutrients and increasing your chances for poor health.

What is the right kind of fat?  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about omega fatty acids.  The two families are the omega-6 fats and the omega-3 fats.

Omega-6 fatty acids perform some important jobs in the body.  They have a hand in lowering blood pressure, decreasing inflammation, maintaining water balance, and helping insulin work.  Omega-6 fats come exclusively from seeds and their oils.  Some of the best are hemp, safflower, sunflower, sesame, soybean, and wheat germ oil.

Our modern diet is generally more deficient in omega-3 fats than in omega-6.  This is in part due to omega-3’s being more unsaturated and more given to damage from cooking and processing,  and thus being excluded from convenience foods.  Omega-3 fats are essential for proper brain function (vision, learning ability, coordination) as well as controlling blood cholesterol and fat levels.  Flax, hemp, pumpkin, and walnut are great sources for omega-3 fats.  You can also get these essential oils in your diet by eating salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, anchovies, and tuna (to name a few fish).

Patrick Holford in his book The New Optimum Nutrition Bible offers up a simple way to get some of these essential fats into your daily diet: the seed jar.

1. Fill a glass jar with an airtight lid half with flaxseeds (rich in omega-3) and half with a combination of sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds (rich in omega-6).
2. Keep the jar sealed, and place in the refrigerator to minimize damage from light, heat, and oxygen.
3. Put a handful in a coffee or seed grinder, grind up, and put on cereals or soups.

I find that a tablespoon of this seed mix goes wonderfully in my green smoothie, bowl of cereal, or even on my salad.  It’s easy to incorporate with my normal foods.

Essential fats can reduce the risk of allergies, cancer, depression, eczema, and fatigue to name just a few.  Don’t those sound like good reasons to include them regularly in your diet?

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Michelle Woodworth
Enjoying the healing benefits of nuts and seeds.