Make your own Healthy Sports Drink at Home

You can make your own sports drinks at home with these simple recipes. Sports drinks ingredients are primarily electrolytes which helps regulate the body fluids and pH balance. But sometimes, I ran out of sports drink at home. Thus, these alternatives comes in handy.  Best of all, these homemade sports drinks have lesser additives making them a healthier option.

These sports drink alternatives are easy to prepare and will be ready in minutes. Or you can prepare them beforehand and then cool them in the fridge for future use.  The basic ingredient is water and salt.  This alone provides you with sodium which is the most electrolyte you lose during exercise.

Note, however, that making homemade sports drinks may lack other electrolytes present in commercially available sports drinks like magnesium and potassium. But there are natural sources of these electrolytes which are present in fruits like in coconut, banana and oranges.  Use these fruits to mix with water and salt.

Check out these homemade sports drink recipes

Thirst Burst from BBC Sport

500ml unsweetened fruit juice (orange, apple, pineapple)
500ml water
Mix them all together in a jug and cool down in fridge

The Lip Twister from fitday.com

1/4 cup of lemon juice
1/4 cup of lime juice
1 teaspoon of salt
1 whole squeezed orange (or one frozen can of orange juice)
1 liter of water
Mix them all together in a jug and cool down in fridge

Sports Drinks on the Cheap from Yahoo Finance

Ingredients:

¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup hot water
¼ cup orange juice (not from concentrate)
2 tablespoon lemon juice
3 1/2 cups cold water

Directions:

Put the salt and sugar in the bottom of a pitcher and cover with hot water to dissolve.
Add the juices and cold water.
Chill in the refrigerator.

Mix It Up (Uses a blender) from fitday.com

2 bananas
3 cups of coconut milk or 2 cups of strawberries
1 cup of water and ice
1 teaspoon of salt
Juice of 1/2 of a lemon
Combine ingredients in a blender.  Blend and serve.

There you go.  Three simple recipes as a healthy alternative to sports drinks. Mix it up and enjoy.

Keep on running!