Welcome to the Get Fit Guys, Quick and Dirty Tips to Slim Down and Shape Up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

In an episode from the Nutrition Diva called How Much Water Should I Drink,

my fellow Quick and Dirty Tips expert, Monica Reinagle, busted two popular myths. Myth number one,

that you need to drink eight glasses of water per day to stay hydrated, and myth number two,

that caffeinated beverages such as coffee and tea are dehydrating. But what about during exercise?

How much water should you drink when you're working out?

Or do you need to drink water at all when you're working out?

And what about salt pills, sports drinks, or electrolytes?

Do you need to take those too?

So today, you'll find out the answers in this episode.

Water loss during exercise can be significant. To put this in proper context,

I'm going to tell you about a recent test that I did to determine how much fluid that I lose

in my sweat during exercise and how much salt was in this sweat. So for this test, which was

overseen by a professional research team in a laboratory,

I ran on a treadmill in a 95-degree room at my maximum exercise capacity for 45 minutes. I was weighed

before and after the test, and even the towel I used to wipe sweat off my body while I was running

was accounted for in

that post-test weighing, so this was a fairly strict protocol.

But that wasn't all.

I was also required to record every morsel of food that I ate, and to collect all my urine

during the 24-hour test period in a special jug.

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