5 Nutrition Strategies for the Heat
Reach your goals and feel energized this summer.
Post summary
Nutrition can make or break whether we feel and perform well when it’s hot outside.
We’re diving into a massive and important review about nutritional strategies for the heat.
We’ll break down exactly how to use water, electrolytes, carbs, protein, caffeine, and creatine to feel, think, and perform better all summer.
The lessons will benefit you regardless of your age or activity level.
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Audio version
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The post
Monday’s post explained how exercising in the heat can improve our health and fitness—if we do it right.
Doing it right often comes down to nutrition and what we eat and drink.
Whether you’re 80 and just want to feel better on a hot outdoor walk or 30 and trying to run a sub-three-hour marathon, these five nutrition strategies will help you stay safe, feel better, and perform stronger this summer.
We’ll cover science-backed approaches to water, electrolytes, carbs, protein, caffeine, and creatine. As always, we’ll keep things simple, science-backed, and violently practical.
Let’s roll …
The nutrition and heat study
Rising global temperatures are leading to more heat-related issues.
And as we learned Monday, exercising in the heat is like walking a tightrope. Heat can improve our health and performance if we use it right, or wreck it if we use it wrong.
A team of scientists recently reviewed1 all the research on how nutrition impacts exercise in the heat. They included only studies that involved humans—which is good because animal studies can be misleading.
They discovered a practical guide for exercising in the heat. Their work shows that eating and drinking right can help you get more out of exercise and think, feel, and live better all summer.
1. Water and electrolytes
Key recommendation: Drink slightly more water than you sweat out and take a big dose of salt an hour before exercise.
When you lose more than two percent of your bodyweight in sweat, you become zombie-like: feeling like death, moving sluggishly, your brain in a fog.
There are two simple ways to determine if you’ve lost too much fluid: