proper hydration

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I have more than trippled my intake of water recently ( I think I might be drinking about a gallon a day now) and I have noticed a big difference in my perfopmance. My question is: How do you know when you are properly hydrated? I pee alot now, will this subside? (it sucks going so often). Am I over hydrating and flushing out important vitamins and minerals? O.k. So I had a few questions. lol. Thanks in advance.

>How do you know when you are properly hydrated?

The easiest way is to watch your urine output. The absolute minimum output per day for a 70kg person with normal kidney function is approx 400-500ml. This will occur even if you drink nothing and will start to fall below this amount when kidney damage starts getting serious. A safer minimum per day is about a litre. For someone doing regular exercise, you should be aiming for at least 4 or 5 'decent-sized' pees per day and note the 'at least'. Urine output is not accurate in all people however, and can be falsely high in people with bad kidneys, poorly controlled diabetes and other conditions. If your diet is high in salt or protein, then it is not a bad idea drink extra water to aim for more like 2 litres urine per day.

>I pee alot now, will this subside?

No - what goes in will need to come out as either urine, sweat, moisture in breath, or else a small amount of water in faeces. Additional losses can occur through vomiting or diarrhoea. Hence, unless you are working up a lot of sweat, you will continue to pee a lot.

>Am I over hydrating and flushing out important vitamins and minerals?

Unlikely - very hard to do but does occasionally occur. Usually you need to drink more than a couple of gallons per day.