Keeping it cool...

My brother went through basic training at Ft. Bliss. When he left home he was a tall, somewhat chubby pale young man. When we went to his graduation we had trouble picking him out of the crowd of brown soldiers. He was a lot thinner and had a dark tan that he had never had when we were kids playing outside in the New Mexico sun. I assumed they had them outside 16 hours a day.

My neice was also stationed at Ft. Bliss. Her unit had orders to go to the middle east but she died before that happened. There was a huge investigation and the family (including me) think her husband poisoned her. Anyway, sorry, that went dark fast.
We had a guy in Basic like your brother. He was well over 6 foot, very pale and just barley met the BMI requirements the Army uses to disqualify overweight recruits. His name was Eisenburg but we all called him Iceberg because he was a big, white, slow moving mass. He kinda looked like a real life version of the character Chris on Family Guy but super tall. After 10 weeks we were calling him Drago because he was looking a lot like Dolph Lundgren from Rocky IV.

I'm sorry to hear about your niece. Nobody deserves to go through that.
 
I have an uncle that was in Vietnam during the war. They were stationed somewhere in the very hot jungle. One afternoon the guys had pinched some beers and were pretty pi----, when unc walked over to get his two allocated cans he filled his pockets of his pants up with them as well. Walking back past the officer he saluted and his beer laden pants fell down, lol.
 
Lots of overlap on beat the heat Foods.
The night before a hot day of work outside I'll drink a quart of Gatorade or Powerade with a supplement of zinc, magnesium and calcium. That will at least keep the cramps away during the morning.
Extra work shirts and shorts and socks. Bandanas.
Like Itah and others - homemade Arnold Palmer's with extra lemon pulp !
Lots of salad with a homemade villegrette. Acidic. With egg whites and cubed ham.
Paella ! With green olives and lemon juice with lots of fresh parsley.
Anything with chicken is marinated in teriyaki sauce.

What's cool about this hot weather is I get to eat a lot more salt , and won't hold any water weight.

JahaRa, I'm so sorry to hear that.