The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

Dedicating yourself to a new lifestyle can be overwhelming at best. Sometimes, it helps to take a look at the small changes you can make, one at a time, that lead to big results. The first one - drink enough water.

My doctor said a person should drink at least 64oz of water a day. I bought myself a 32oz nalgene bottle and drink at least two of those a day. I hate water - I don’t know what it is about it, but I can’t stand drinking just water. However, I feel tremendously better when I drink enough water - I have less headaches, feel full throughout the day, even my mood improves.  Here’s some tips that helped me drink my daily 64oz:

Flavor the water. My wife likes using a lemon. I like Crystal Light. I buy boxes of Crystal Light On-the-Go - there’s probably a more frugal choice, but I like the convenience of dropping one pouch of Crystal Light per 32oz of water.

Use a water filter. Filtering the water definitely makes it taste better, as does drinking it cold. I use Brita water pitchers - one at work, one at home. If I could find a water bottle type thing that uses filtering, I’d probably try one out.

Make your water readily available. I set my water bottle on my desk in easy reach - any pause in my work, I take a drink.  Just sipping on that bottle over the course of the day usually adds up to 64oz.

Add a water section to your food journal. If you keep a food journal, make sure you record how much water you drink each day.

Beware of bottled water.  I won’t go into the whole “studies show it’s all just tap water” debate; that’s not the point of this article, and I personally use filtered tap water anyway.  What I did not expect is my bottled water to have as many calories as a can of soda!  I tried something healthy-sounding, like Glaceau’s Vitamin Water, as an alternative to grabbing a can of soda to drink along with a meal.  I drank the entire bottle before I thought to look at the contents to see what vitamins were in the water, when I doscovered this bottle of water contained practically 140 calories and 30 grams of sugar.  This simply brought home one of the important lessons I learned - be mindful and conscious of every item I choose to put in my mouth, from the point of selection to the point of swallowing.

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