Water
Carnivore advice is to trust your thirst. Eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty.
If you are worried that your sense of thirst has somehow become dysregulated, one way to track this is the colour of your urine. Dark yellow suggests that you should drink more water. Very pale yellow, or completely clear, urine suggests that you are drinking too much.
A couple of things I've noticed, I'm not sure how generally applicable they are:
- I seem to be noticeably less thirsty on a carnivore diet. I think (?) this is because oxidising fat creates more metabolic water than oxidising carbs.
- If I eat a high protein meal, I'm always very thirsty about 30 minutes after the meal. This is one of the ways I've learned to recognise that I'm not eating enough fat.
Links
- Drink at least eight glasses of water a day. Really? Is there scientific evidence for 8 x 8? by Heinz Valtin
- No Evidence of Dehydration with Moderate Daily Coffee Intake by Sophie Killer
- Metabolic water from Wikipedia
- Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports by Tim Noakes
- Urine Colour Chart from Healthline