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.
