Best recs for electrolytes!
What’s one habit I literally can’t remember my life without? Electrolytes.
If you aren’t drinking electrolytes, I’m almost positive you aren’t living up to your full potential. Maybe it’s placebo or maybe it’s real, but my morning drink quite literally saves my day before it begins. And I mean saves my day, every day. However, the electrolyte market is also full of crap. So let’s talk about the best recommendations for them…
My top suggestion is to make your own electrolytes at home. This is what I do every morning. I also think there’s something to be said for the ritual of making a drink each morning (yes, even if you’re busy). Every day I fill one big ass Yeti with ~75% filtered water, ~25% organic coconut water, and then squeeze half an organic lemon, and top it off with a pinch of organic sea salt. It tastes great, and feels even better when you are actually hydrated to start the day. Oh, and it gets things moving. I miss this concoction when I’m traveling or out of one of the ingredients.
For on-the-go, there’s a huge market filled with pre-packaged electrolyte sticks. Sadly, like many “wellness” products, they are mostly crap. By the way, the reason for this is not because everyone wants to mess with you. Coming from someone who has looked into making several ‘wellness’ products, a big part of this is because real ingredients are not naturally shelf stable nor meant to be stored in powder or tube form in your cabinet for six months. A lot of these companies probably set out to make a good-for-you product, but came up against the challenges of needing preservatives and fillers to produce them in a mass market, shelf-stable way. I digress, back to the recs. I used to be an LMNT fan. As a salt lover, the taste was great. However, there was a whole thing with them not including maltodextrin as an ingredient and that just doesn’t sit right with me for a product I’m using daily. Not to mention they are expensive af (kind of a challenge with this whole category). After trying a lot of sticks, and drinking a lot of meh (and straight up gross) ones, I recommend Taylor Dukes Wellness Guava Grapefruit Electrolyte Drink Mix. I’ll give the big caveat that these are tough to mix for on-the-go use (you really need a handheld frother, and even then, you might have a bit of grit) but these taste good and the ingredients cannot be beat. The grapefruit guava is my favorite flavor. These are still pricey, but I at least feel better knowing I am supporting a small, female-owned business.
If you’re not feeling up to traveling with your handheld frother (I don’t blame you) I’d recommend grabbing a coconut water and/or watermelon juice at your nearest grocery store while traveling. Not going to cover all of your bases, but it’s definitely better than nothing. And if you’re out here thinking Gatorade or Vitamin water will work, just google the ingredients in either and then come back to this article when you realize you need an alternative.
I would love to hear from people who a) are obsessed with electrolytes and have other recs for us to try b) try one of these solutions and find it life changing and c) trolls who drink their coffee before anything in the morning and think they don’t need to change. I welcome you all!
