Monday, July 22, 2013

Get your water in!

     I can't stress this enough- drink your water!  The body is made up of mostly water.  It's in our blood, our tissues, and our joints.  Water protects the spinal cord and other sensitive organs.  It acts as a transport medium to other parts of the body.  Water also keeps our body temperature down.  According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, and even the bones are watery: 31%. When we run low on water, our body let's us know through feelings of hunger, lethargy, headaches, and irritability.  Who wants to feel like that?

     Water also helps us lose weight through excretion.  It's our body's filtration system.  Water gets rid of wastes through urination, perspiration, and bowel movements.  We can get some help from the foods we consume like watermelon, grapes, celery, tomatoes, and oranges.

Here are a couple of ways to try to get water back into your body that has worked for others:

1.  Flavor the water.  Use a lemon or a lime, or even cut your juice in half and fill the rest of the glass up with water.  This may sound disgusting but when my grandmother was sick and needed to drink water (she hates it by the way), she would fill a glass up about 2/3 of the way and top it off with her favorite soda- Mountain Dew.  Now, I'm not telling you drink soda with water, but find something that you can dilute.

2.  Set an alarm at your computer.  I got this from a client who told me he was killing 2 birds with 1 stone.  There were some times at work when he would not leave his computer, so he set an alarm every 20min to get up and go for a walk and drink some water.  Not only was he trying to get some type of movement in his day, but he was also trying to hydrate.

3.  Do the math.  Let's say you begin your day at 7a and go to lunch around 12p.  You have a 24oz water bottle that you never use but it sits on your desk.  Fill up the water bottle and divide it by the number of hours before lunch and after lunch.  This means that you would drink about 6oz each hour, to make sure that water is gone before lunch.  Fill it up again after lunch, and do the same before you go home.  This way, you have had 2 water bottles full of water, split up throughout your day.  Bam!  48oz!

4.  Delegate.  Last, but not least, let the water bottle tell you what to do.  I'm actually liking this idea and though no one I know has one, I think I will purchase one myself.  The HydraCoach calculates how much you need to drink during a 24hr. period.  There's a sensor in the straw that tracks your progress.  How cool is that?

My clients tell me that they forget to drink water throughout the day.  They forgot because they are not hydrated!


No comments:

Post a Comment