17 Tips for meeting your fluid needs • Start the day with a drink of hot water rather than a caffeinated drink which stimulates urine production and therefore fluid loss. Add a squeeze of fresh lemon/lime, or a drop of red grape juice or apple juice if you need a little fla-vour. • Fill a 1.5 or 2 litre bottle and take keep it with you at work/home – drinking from this through the day gives you a measure of how much you’ve drunk, and having the bottle in front of you will remind you to drink regularly. • Keep smaller water bottles in the car or in your gym kit bag, so you are never caught out with-out water to hand. • Always take a filled water bottle to your exercise session (and drink it!). • Sip fluids throughout the day – hydration is achieved more successfully in this way, rather than drinking a large amount quickly. • Drink herbal or fruit teas through the day as these will hydrate you rather than act as di-uretics like tea, coffee, hot chocolate and many energy drinks. A diuretic such as drinks con-taining caffeine stimulates urine production as a result of the caffeine prompting adrenaline release and the resulting increase in blood pres- sure. An increase in blood pressure is corrected by releasing more fluid from the blood via urine production, hence promoting the loss of fluid and electrolytes. • Alcohol is also a diuretic as it switches off the release of anti-diuretic hormone from the pos-terior pituitary gland, so you need to drink more water whenever you consume alcohol. • Consume foods with high water content such as fresh fruit (not dried) and vegetables. Adequate hydration is achieved when the volume of urine produced matches fluid intake, or when the co-lour of urine is a pale straw colour – an easier way to monitor hydration levels! Sara Kirkham is a registered nutritional therapist with a first class honours degree in Nutritional Medicine. Af-ter 20 years working in the health and fitness industry, she now runs nutritional therapy clinics in Cornwall and lectures physiology, human chemistry and nutrition for Cornwall College and Plymouth University. She has pub-lished research and a number of books, all available at www.amazon.co.uk or at good book stores. Further infor - mation on healthy eating and hydration can be found in ‘Food for Health – The Essential Guide’ or ‘Lose Weight, Gain Energy, Get Healthy’; further sports nutrition ad-vice is included in ‘Get into Running’, both by the author.