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.

Thank you for visiting The Life Ledger. If you enjoyed this article, check out the related posts below and subscribe to our feed.