Benefits of Salt
- Endless amounts of sustained energy throughout the day
- Tremendous strength
- Massive pumps and fuller looking muscles
- Removal of joint pain
- Increased blood circulation causing less cramps, and faster recovery during your workouts and between your workouts
These are the benefits of increased salt intake and they sound great and all, but a question I get asked a lot is:
”Will I retain more water and look bloated as a result of increasing my salt intake?”
And the short answer to that is: NO. In fact, you will hold less water beneath the skin WHILE your muscles will look fuller… if you do it right..
If you only cared about the answer then you can shut this video off right now.
If you actually care WHY, then stay with me.
Regulated Systems
Let me explain to you how this works.
This is something you absolutely have to learn about the human body:
Your body is made up of many regulated systems.
That means that your body attempts (through whatever means necessary) to maintain itself around some predetermined level.
Now, most systems in the human body are regulated. Probably all of them.
For example: Your body temperature where the body wants to maintain a certain temperature.
If you are put somewhere cold, your body will make you shiver, as well as cutting off blood flow to your smaller limbs to try and keep your bodyheat up. This is why fingers and toes get so cold. And when you go into a warm area or you exercise, your body sweats and increases blood flow to all the limbs to try and get rid of the excess heat, so that you don’t overheat.
Another example is blood pressure. Where the body makes adjustments to try to maintain blood pressure on a normal level.
I’m not talking about chronic high or low bloodpressure issues but rather small changes throughout the day.
Your body’s blood glucose levels are similar, being regulated with the help of insuline.
And as my last example: The same applies to bodyweight.
When you go on a diet: increasing activity or decreasing food intake. Or a combination of both.
Your body senses this and should decrease your metabolic rate, increase appetite, decrease activity levels and make fat mobilization and fat loss more difficult as a result of this.
This would make it progressively more difficult to lose weight, and easier to regain the lost weight once it is lost. Makes sense?
Water Balance and Retention
So the same applies to water balance.
Which is relevant to the question of today about salt intake and water retention.
If you get a little dehydrated: your body will change a bunch of processes so that you retain water; if you drink a lot of water, you’ll pee more to get rid of the excess.
So how does this tie in with the original question? Well if you’re not CONSISTENT with your salt and water intake on a daily basis,
Your body can not properly regulate water balance. Well, it does regulat but NOT with the prefered outcome.
The prefered outcome would be holding as little water beneath the skin as possible, right?
If you drink plenty of water every single day and take in plenty of salt every single day, your body has no reason to hold on to excess water.
When you increase your salt intake you’ll actually notice that you’ll pee a lot more and that your body composition improves as far as water balance goes. So fuller muscles while holding less water beneath the skin.
If you dehydrate your body, your body will hold on to all the water you give it because it thinks water is scarce.
So if your water and salt intake is all over the place on a weekly basis, resulting in your body doing whatever is necessary to regulate.
Then yes, you will, just like your intake, not have a consisent shape. You will end up looking like shit.
Watch Your Caffeine!
Another thing about water balance I want to add to this video is the intake of caffeine.
When you consume 4 cups of coffee you actually lose a teaspoon of salt through your urine.
And yet we’re told to only consume a teaspoon or less.And that’s while most people drink a lot more than 4 cups of coffee. Far more.
And the fitness industry is even worse, as far as caffeine goes.
The average fitness-ethusiast wakes up: takes a fat burning supplement with 1, 2 or 300mg of caffiene.
Then has their 4+ cups of coffee throughout the day like the mainstream person, and ON TOP of that,
at the end of the day they top it off with a preworkout supplement with another 5 or 600mg of caffeine.
And at the same time minimizing or completely eliminating all the salt from their diet. No wonder most people experience fatique throughout the day, have joint pain all the time, look flat and bloated (basically like shit) and they recover poorly.
And ofcourse they are addicted and dependant on a preworkout supplement because otherwise they wouldn’t even make it to the gym.
And I’m not even talking about the piss poor programming of most workout plans with bodypart splits and 20+sets per musclegroup, which will make these effects even worse.
And I’ve said this before:
If you take in sufficient salt, sufficient water, and minimize your caffeine intake: you will have endless amounts of sustained energy throughout the day and you no longer need a preworkout supplement.
I wake up at 5 and I feel like a machine that is ON non-stop until I go to bed at night. The energy and mental focus is insane.
And as a bonus: it saves most people like 50 bucks a month on preworkouts.
I will create a video dedicated to preworkout supplements because they don’t work. Studies have shown already that they don’t put any more muscle on you.
Practical Advice: Try This…
So try this: take a teaspoon of salt 30 minutes before you workout together with a bottle of water and notice the difference.
Iodised seasalt or pink himalaya salt is the best choice because of the abundance of minerals.
If you like the effects. 10X that effect and imagine having that feeling throughout the whole day. Thats what you’ll experience if you take in sufficient salt everyday with your meals.
So I hope that clears some things up for you.
Thank you so much for your support. I appreciate it!
