Growing up, I always heard the set rule— “Drink eight cups of water a day.” And as a child, with little more than water or milk offered to drink, I drank a lot of water.
Now, the experts recommend that you take your body weight, divide it in half, and that’s how many ounces of water per day you should drink.
That sounds highly scientific to me. I would like to know how they figured out this is the set amount of water you should drink daily.
And still yet, there are those who recommend you drink a full gallon of water every day. That’s a lot of water.
Whether or not you are an 8-cupper or a half-your-body-weight in ouncer or a full galloner, we can all agree that drinking water is one of the best things we can do for our health. My poor kids are probably tired of hearing me tell them to drink another glass of water. Hungry after dinner? Drink some water. Have a headache? Drink some water. Getting the sniffles? Let’s up our water intake. It’s my first line of defense against pretty much everything.
But when life gets busy, making sure we get enough water can seem like a daunting task (especially if we don’t want to be running to the bathroom all day long.)
Get a nice, large water bottle.
Generally, you can find me lugging around my Stanley. I never set out to be a Stanley girl, but after being gifted two different ones, I am now a Stanley girl. You don’t have to have a Stanley to drink all the water. My favorite water bottles are generally stainless steel or glass. I do tend to drop things on the regular, so stainless steel is the safer choice for me. I once had a (plastic) water bottle that was a gallon. It worked for a while, but lugging that thing everywhere was a pain. I found myself accidentally leaving it at home when I had to go out or forgetting to fill it up in the morning. When purchasing your bottle, don’t let yourself think bigger is better. You want something that you aren’t going to have to fill up seventy-five times to get your water in for the day, but you also don’t want something that is cumbersome to carry around with you (because you’re going to have to take it with you almost everywhere—it’s your new best friend.
Up the taste by infusing your water.
Let’s be honest. Sometimes just plain water is a bit … dull. Whenever the water blahs take over, I infuse my water for a little extra punch — and no, infusing with tea leaves or magical coffee beans doesn’t count (at least, I don’t count it. But then again, I’m not an expert here, just a lifelong water drinker, so maybe someone with a few more years of college under their belt (and someone who studied a bit more than English literature) should have the final say on if that counts or not.) You can infuse it with fruit or essential oils. My favorite is a drop of peppermint. Sometimes, I’ll add a couple drops of lime essential oil as well and it tastes very similar to a mojito.
Chug.
Yes, chug that water as much as you can. Instead of just taking sips of water here and there throughout the day, take a few times to take huge gulping chugs. I know you might be worried about needing to go to the bathroom every two minutes, but I’ve found that the worst days are the first couple of days — and then my body evens it out a bit and I don’t feel like I’m constantly running to the bathroom. I’ve also heard that if you add a pinch of high-quality salt to your water, it’ll help with having to go to the bathroom all the time. I tried it once, and it didn’t seem to work for me, but maybe you’ll have better luck.
Those are my top three tips for drinking more water on the daily.
What about you? What have you found helps you make sure you get your daily water intake?
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