Got 99 Problems But Hydration Isn't One | Health Mindset

In this episode, I talk about the power of hydration and why you definitely need to drink more water. I also share a super personal story about my experience with dehydration and the effect it had on me and the one tip I received last year that has been a huge game changer for me.

This episode features coarse language and may not be suitable for all audiences.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Freewell podcast.

I am here today to talk to you about hydration which probably sounds kind of like lame or simple but I think it is an important conversation to have in terms of both like lifestyle and self-care and I mean if I'm totally honest with you I feel like a really big portion of our problems could be solved just by being more hydrated which sounds like an oversimplification but I mean water flushes toxins out of our system,

It keeps all of our systems running smoothly,

It makes us more alert than caffeine though is admittedly somewhat less satisfying than caffeine but yeah I mean it keeps our eyes nose throat and other organs and systems well lubricated so we can move smoothly through the world and you know we can see with laser focus and it helps us sleep better and think more clearly and it's just such a simple fix it's just something so easy that we could be doing that it makes me wonder like why we don't and I know that this is a huge issue for a lot of people it's been more of an issue for me lately than it ever was in the past and it wasn't like I mean I've never been a big water drinker growing up when I when I was growing up god I drank so much milk it's actually kind of gross to think about now because for those of you who are listening from like North America you can get like a gallon of milk right like you can go to the store and get this like super ultra gigantic container of milk which you can't really find in Europe unless you go to like a European version of Costco but it's really uncommon most milk is sold in like one liter containers and just like the thought that like and I was definitely I was going through like a gallon which is four liters of milk per week when I was younger and yeah I was never really a big water drinker I didn't like water because I didn't like the way it tastes and like this is one of the things that we're going to talk to talk about today in terms of like blocks to staying hydrated like why is it so hard to stay hydrated and like one of those things is definitely that you know water doesn't taste good like a lot of people say that like I don't like the taste of water and I mean I think that's a relatively simple fix when you think too about the cost versus benefits right like it takes nothing but like a little extra effort to stay well hydrated it has such a massive impact on like every aspect of our lives because if we're just like sleeping well and staying well hydrated even if we're not maybe excelling in like the eating healthy side or like on the movement side of things it's just we're already going to be in such a better place just from doing that it gives you so much more mental clarity and since we are talking about mindset on this podcast right like it's easier to do the mindset work it's easier to experience the shifts when you have that mental clarity and that mental clarity can come from being well hydrated so I think we all have our own blocks to showing up like I think some people don't like the taste of water some people just forget or they're not like well prepared which is like obviously an easy fix I think at least but I'm going to share a little bit about my story and I'm going to preface this by saying this story may be TMI for some people so if that's you then you know forewarned is forearmed so you can make a decision about whether or not to continue but yeah so when I moved to Rome in 2012 I began having panic attacks and the panic attacks would happen almost exclusively on public transit and almost exclusively because of the discussion of having to go to the bathroom so of having to pee just like to put it straight out there because we're talking about water and so like this was 14 years ago I'd never really experienced panic before then though I think that if I was to go to a psychologist and ask for a diagnosis I would probably be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder which is like not something I've necessarily done I've spoken to therapists about it in the past but it's not something that I choose to necessarily buy into and as I'm working more and more on my mindset I'm really trying to release the idea of having anxiety at all but this is a conversation for another episode of the podcast anyways so like I have experienced anxiety before I've been depressed before that would have been in and around 2008,

2009 but I'd never really experienced like panic and panic is a whole other beast I feel like from those those two things anxiety is like this low hum I feel like at least that's my experience of it so it's this kind of constant feeling of like agitation I guess to a certain extent and panic is this full-on like seizing of the body like I feel like your heart begins to race and like your mind races and you can't really calm down and like it doesn't really make any sense and it's not necessarily linked to anything in particular it just boom it's there and it's intense it's very very intense in a way that I think anxiety has never been for me because the the anxiety that I've experienced has been so persistent that it's like on a it's on the same level every day so like when I when I say that I feel anxious then I know that I've gone over my my own threshold and it's still not the same feeling as panic even when I can say I'm I'm anxious it still doesn't feel the way that these panic attacks felt it was like this like heart racing mind racing but full body tension like trying to find a solution and not being able to find one and like a little bit of shortness of breath there's there's just a lot of things going on but my panic was basically around the fact that I lived about 20 minutes from the center of Rome and I had to get there by transit and I almost always took the metro and I don't know if you've ever been to Europe but when you take the metro you always have to go underground so you're going and quite a ways underground so first you go underground to the entrance of the metro right and sometimes there are like quite large tunnels because there's multiple entrances for every stop so some entrances are longer than others and then you get to like where the tickets are and like the the oh what are they called not the pedestals but like the the stalls where you go through to get to the actual metro and then you go again another layer below to actually get to the to the metro so like you're quite a ways underground and like Rome is a big city it's a population of two million and like there's a pretty constant flux of people on the metro especially in like the higher season months which I'm to be honest with you in terms of tourism in Italy there's no such thing as high or low season every season is high season every season is tourist season unfortunately but it is that way and so like I remember when I would go to meet friends in the center and I'd have to take the metro for 20 minutes I would be so so so stressed because I would have to get onto the metro and I wouldn't be able to find a bathroom until I ended up wherever we decided that we were going once I got downtown so I'd have to go from from my house to the metro ride the metro 20 minutes get off the metro and then go to with my friends to wherever it was that we were going or even if I was by myself what difference does it make but in any case so all of it was like 30 minutes and like it sounds so silly to say but it was it was so visceral this experience it was so stressful and it left an impression on me that lasted well after the experience of being in Rome and like the metro so I kind of built up this like panic and anxiety about um like traveling and drinking water because it was always drinking water I've always felt that my body processes water in a very unique and inexplicable way so I always feel like if I drink a glass of water I pee out two glasses and like really fast really soon thereafter and that was always so stressful for me so like whenever I knew I had to go on the metro what would I do I would not drink for like multiple hours before I had to go on the metro and then if I was out with friends I would try to drink less as well because I was afraid of like getting on the metro and having a panic attack because I felt like I'd have to go to the bathroom and there were no bathrooms anywhere there were no bathrooms in any of the metro stations really and in order to get to a bathroom you then have to go through like the series that I said so you have to come up one level from the metro to the main entrance and then you have to go from that to like from that main entrance to like another however long to get to the street entrance and then from the street to go wherever you're going and like I couldn't handle it it was so so so stressful for me and so this became something that I started to do when I would drive as well so I'd be like driving from like my hometown to Vancouver it's about a 10-hour drive and I wouldn't drink water like the whole time I was in the car because I'd be so afraid of having to pee and not being able to find a bathroom and like let me explain the difference too in Canada this is really not an issue because I mean every x number of kilometers you find a gas station and stuff like that in Italy it is slightly more problematic unless you're actually on the highway but if you're on like the state roads then you're not necessarily finding anywhere to go to the bathroom so when I moved here in 2016 like this was this lasted for a really long time for me this story it's only like up in the last little bit that it really changed um and like and I'll explain how I kind of moved through that but um yeah like it just it was so visceral and so intense that I carried it with me for like way too way too fucking long to be honest with you and so like one of the things I've learned about this I'll be honest with you there's there's a couple of situations that happen so the person that I was with um previously like my ex-partner um he would make me feel bad about having to pee all the time and so that just like wasn't a space that I felt like occupying and so I felt like I had to continue on with this kind of like um you know depriving myself of water when I'm traveling in order to like not be a burden about having to go to the bathroom all the time and stuff like that and um and like this would get worse too when I when I traveled because whenever I travel I'd be afraid to have coffee because coffee is a diuretic so it makes you go to the bathroom and I would just like really limit my my intake and then what happens when you do that you get really bad headaches and I already have headaches in general like I that tends to be one of like the only things actually health-wise that I suffer from but I definitely suffer from headaches and like it makes you feel groggy and it makes your eyes itchy and like it's just so physically uncomfortable like you know your mouth gets dry and it's harder to talk and like everything is just awful so like one of the things that changed for me was actually when I left that relationship and I I started seeing my new partner so we started seeing each other last year and very shortly after we met we went to Asia and together and I was like just saying to him like listen I have this thing that you know tends to kind of hold me back like I feel like I get really stressed and I feel like I have to pee all the time and his response was so and I'd be like well I don't think I should have the coffee you know because like and also say no to coffee in Cambodia try if if you like coffee and you go to Cambodia or Vietnam try and say no to it it's so good it's so it's so good and like that's like one of my favorite things to do when I travel too is to like eat and stuff like that and like some of my favorite dishes like especially in Vietnam like I love pho and like soup I mean soup is it's bad like it's not it's not it's not wonderful for like what the situation that I'm describing and actually this made me think of another story but my partner was like so what if you have to go to the bathroom well stop like what difference does it make and he made it sound so easy and I get that that sounds ridiculous to somebody who's not suffering from this problem but I was in situations where everyone except for like my mom and dad made me feel really bad about this so like the fact that somebody was giving me permission to just be like who I am lessened a lot of the anxiety around it and also I need to preface this by saying that we were in Asia there is no metro there like where we were at least because we were in Cambodia and um so like there wasn't that panic of like going underground I haven't faced that a whole lot since when that happened it's come up but I've done better with it but it's yeah so I don't know how it would be if I was like living in a situation where I had to take the metro all the time but anyways that permission of somebody like seeing me for like all of who I am including whatever the fuck this story is was really really like freeing it was really liberating and it made me be able to like ease up and so like the lack of anxiety around the situation made it even easier to deal with and actually while we were in Asia I had very few problems with this discussion um so like that was like a huge huge um gift I will say however that one night we were at the street market in Siem Reap and I had pho for dinner because I can't not when it's there and I knew it was a bad idea because like we were at a street market and you're on the side of the road and I can tell you there are no bathrooms in sight in those situations and um like after we left we had to walk to go pick up our laundry and like luckily the laundry place was like near a mall but I was dying like I barely made it like the two kilometers from from where we had um where we had dinner at the street market and like where we were like where the bathroom was but those moments are so stressful like it's so so hard for me and I didn't really understand like why this was happening until I did um a program with um a girl and as a special guest she had a lady called I'm and I'm probably going to say her name wrong so I'm sorry in advance but her name is Julie uh Chivielo-Pollier and she's a health beauty and expert and I did a master class with her in one of these in a program that I was in and this has unlocked everything for me so she explained that when we drink water we should actually take small sips of water because what that does is it gives the body time to integrate this introduction and influx into our system so when we drink water too fast it flushes through our system equally as quickly as we drank it and it has less of a positive effect on us as well and then just by logic it makes us pee all the time which can be a lot less fun so ever since I did that with her and it was like last year I think um yeah it was last year it was last January and ever since I did that and I've learned this idea of like taking small sips of water I've really had way less of this negative side effect but like obviously you can see how like this fear and the panic and the anxiety around this situation would make me way less hydrated and then over time it really really really adds up and it becomes a problem and you can feel it in every aspect of your body and it's also like really dangerous if you're exercising if you're not properly hydrating and so on and so forth so like anyways so long-winded story to tell you that there is a ways around it and number one is giving yourself permission it's always going to be number one right giving yourself permission to be exactly who you are in whatever situation that you find yourself in just being really okay with what is like I know that this is to a certain extent part of who I am and I do things to like manage it which are no longer like dehydrating myself because that was how I was managing it for like a solid decade um but like giving myself permission to be like you know what I'm probably gonna have to pee at some point and I'm probably gonna pee more than the average person it is what it is and allowing myself to be hydrated allowing myself to have that clarity to have that like safe space in my body and like really yeah owning all of that and then like the second thing is just this discussion about taking small sips of water like throughout the day and it doesn't matter like how how far between like if you take a small sip and then a minute later you take a small sip it's still better I've found for me than if I drink like a huge amount all at once which I usually do only after I've exercised because I feel like I really need it so how else can you make hydrating fun and easy I mean there's all kinds of like silly ideas like you can get a really cute water bottle I have I remember that when I was in Vancouver in 2018 I did an I went to an event hosted by Bumble BFF Bumble BFF to meet like other women and there was like a yoga event and they gave us like a free bag and inside the bag they had like um a swell water bottle so that's like s apostrophe w-e-l-l swell water bottle this thing I'm not an affiliate there's no like I'm not getting paid this is not an ad but like this water bottle is fucking insane it keeps your water ice cold for 24 hours that to me is unheard of I've never ever found anything that works this well and given that I'm Canadian and like pretty much you get like water with ice without asking I'm used to drinking like ice cold water like 365 days per year so I really really love the idea of having this water bottle and being able to like drink cold water and also it's super cute and also it was free so that's like another big bonus obviously because who doesn't like free stuff um also when I was trying to up my intake of water and this would have been probably around 2016 when I moved to Italy because the temperature here is also much hotter I um started I downloaded a water reminder and a tracking app and that made a huge difference for me because it would remind me every two three hours you can have it remind you like with whatever cadence you want but it was it was massive because half the battle is remembering to drink because we're sitting at our computers we're at our desks we're doing all the shit that we have to do in our daily lives we're running around we're taking care of the kids we're making dinner cleaning cooking whatever it is that we're doing and like sometimes you just don't think about it and then also you probably think about it chug a bunch of water and then it's the same discussion it's like flushing through your system quicker than it would if you were drinking water slower but more consistently right and really giving your body time to like integrate the benefits of the water so yeah another thing to do as always is mindset work so we can change the story about why we drink water how we drink water when we drink water what it means for us we can have we can tell a totally different story so instead of saying i don't like water or you know whatever we can say like this is fuel for my body i know that every time i drink water every time i take a small sip of water i am keeping myself functioning at a high level i am keeping my vibration high you know what i mean i am really taking care of myself and showing up for myself in like a really small but super loving way so there's always room to do mindset work on pretty much everything all the time you can also like do like funky shit with your water if you're into that so like you can drink spa water so spa water would be like water infused with different fruits and vegetables like you know when you go like the classic like water with cucumbers or like water with berries or with oranges or with lemon oh god i love water with lemon um in in canada whenever i would go out for dinner like my mom and i would always order like like water with lemon um i forgot why why did i forget about that but i totally did anyways love it and also um just as a side note not that i'm a nutritionist but like lemon also functions to balance out the ph of your body so it's actually really beneficial from that point as well and then if you're really into like alternative forms of of uh doing things you can create high vibe water with crystals or other ingredients so you can put other things inside your water or you can like put water in a bowl with crystals around the new moon and you can infuse it with all the kind of witchy juju that you're into um i've never done this but i know that they actually sell water bottles with crystals inside the water bottle it's like got this like gigantic like crystal stalk in the middle of the water bottle um and like you know it's supposed to help keep the the frequency of the water high so if you're into it you can do that too um all of this episode is to say that like the conversation that we're having here is about a healthy mindset so how can you make small steps to take care of yourself consistently over time so that you can go out and do the other things like if think about it this way like we talk about mindset all the time on the podcast like that's my jam that's the whole thing but like wouldn't it be better and easier if you come at the mindset work like well hydrated and fueled with that clarity that the hydration provides with the like rest and relaxation that the hydration provides with the alertness that the you know that the hydration provides as opposed to like us always searching for like coffee or caffeine or chocolate or sugar or whatever it is right that we're searching for um and like again not a doctor this is not health advice and like talk to your doctor and all that jazz but like water is good for you drink more water um so yeah but like it just the reason why I'm saying this is because I've noticed over the last little bit that I've been really dehydrated because I've been forgetting to drink water because I stopped using the tracking app a while ago because it stopped being relevant and now it's become relevant again so maybe I'll download one um I think I want a different one than the one I've been using and I don't have like I've tried like two or three and like they're cool and they're fun and whatever but like I don't know I just kind of would like something a little bit more fun than the ones that I've been using but yeah and and just like going about it with like the small sips and also I'll say another trick that I use when I'm not using the swell water bottle because in the winter in Italy I drink uh I tend to drink room temperature water because Italy has changed so much about who I am as a human but um I usually buy two liter water bottles from the grocery store and then I refill them from the fountain that we have near our house and um I use those bottles to track so in theory we should be drinking like about one and a half to two liters of water per day and it depends on your body weight and your height and all this jazz so like if you download an app they will ask you and they will tell you how many glasses of water you should be drinking but um I try to drink two liters of water and one of the ways that I track that because I cannot be bothered to um track glasses and also I'm a weirdo I do not like drinking out of glasses ever I don't ever ever ever drink out of glasses unless I'm at somebody else's house or like out at a restaurant or whatever um but even then if they give me a bottle of water like a plastic then I don't they usually give in Italy they'll give you like also a plastic glass and I usually just drink it out of the bottle because like I can't I don't know why and I've been like this forever it's just another little quirk but anyways I use the two liter bottles to track to like how far I've gotten in the day with my towards my goal of drinking two liters of water per day and I'll be honest with you lately not great I'm at about like a liter to a liter and a half but I haven't been at two liters in a long time and that's going to change inevitably because it's getting hot here in Italy and like you naturally drink more when it gets warmer so that's not like a big deal and not something I'm necessarily concerned about moving forward but I do think that had I been more hydrated in the last like couple of months I probably would have been in a better position to face the things that were coming up and also because I think I would have been sleeping better so there's like a lot of things and health is all interconnected like life is all interconnected there's not one area of your life that I feel you can remove or pinpoint and say okay well if I do this and it'll be great because like if you do the mindset work and you never move your ass like it's gonna work but it's gonna be limited in what it can achieve it's always going to be more powerful when you come at things from like a really holistic point of view so like go to bed drink your water eat healthy move your butt do your mindset work and life will be great anyways I hope that this episode was uh useful and if you like saw yourself in the story that I shared about panic attacks in the bathroom like I'd be really keen to hear about your experience if you're interested in sharing with me please do reach out um otherwise yeah I hope you found this useful and I hope you have an amazing weekend and I will see you on the next episode of the podcast ciao

Reviews

Oh you're from Vancouver too. I'm in Spain and I'm a different human too because of it. I've had the same problem as you too. I really appreciate this reminder and decided to download an app. Let's see if I can improve the situation now.

I think we have the same body 😅 I was even like this as a child, except I didn't drink milk either (lactose intolerant)... I've always been good at finding bathrooms (and don't mind peeing outside- raised in the countryside lol). I'm going to try small sips! Thanks you! 😊🙏💚🌟