Easy ways to Increase your Water Intake

Our “Drink More Water” Challenge just started a few days ago. How have you done so far? Has it been easy to increase the amount your drinking every, or has it been a struggle? For many people, it is difficult to up their water intake. Sure, water helps to prevent dehydration and it has tons of benefits, including:

Improving your skin, hair, and nails
Relieving headaches
Reducing muscle cramps
Helping to flush out your body
Improving weight loss efforts
Giving you more energy

You know it’s important, you’ve heard about all the benefits, but your [insert favorite beverage here] just tastes so gosh darn good. And water is just – not the same. Or you’re too busy to get it in. Or you don’t like the taste (or the source) of water. Or you just forget. Or any number of other reasons…

So, what can you do?

Here are 4 easy suggestions to gradually and seamlessly increase the amount of water you drink each day. If you have other suggestions, be sure to leave them in the comments area below! We’ll have a follow up post in a few weeks and would love to include some of your tips!

Drink 8-20 oz of Water immediately when you wake up. Before you make your coffee, jump in the shower, get the kids on the bus, whatever your daily routine is – Drink your water first. I keep a 16 oz bottle of water next to my bed. Occasionally, I’ll sip it through the night, but there’s always at least half a bottle or more left when I wake up. So, I drink whatever remains before my feet hit the floor. If I’m aiming for at least 64 oz in a day, boom, I’ve just knocked it down to 48 before you’ve even started your day. Stay tuned for an upcoming post on the Japanese morning Water ritual.
Drink at least 8 oz of water before every meal, snack, or non-H20 drink. Train your mind to know that if you are going to put anything into your body, whether it is your morning coffee, breakfast, mid-day soda, happy hour drink, dinner or a late-night treat, you have to drink 8 ounces of water first. This simple adjustment provides several benefits.
- Helps your digestive system process your food more efficiently
- Prevents overeating. Have you ever heard that you may not be hungry, just thirsty? Drinking a glass of water will confirm which it is!
- Aids your body in flushing toxins out
Drink Water before consuming something “bad,” at a 1:1 ratio. Do you love soda? Super sweet coffee from Starbucks or your own kitchen? Happy Hour cocktails? Applying this little trick allows you to still enjoy your favorite drink a little more than you might otherwise, knowing you’re flushing a lot of the “bad stuff” out right away. It’s so hard for me to give up my favorite soda (which has been Big Red since I returned to the Midwest). I prefer the 20 oz bottles of Big Red. So, I keep an empty bottle handy, fill it up with water, and drink the water first, before I indulge in my favorite treat. Implementing this strategy helps to curb the desire, drink less of your “bad” treat (sometimes not even the entire bottle!), and just enjoy your favorite treat without feeling so bad about it. Your body will thank you.
Track Your Intake or Make it Easy to Monitor. Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much water you’ve had for the day. I usually drink the 16.9 oz bottles of water throughout the day; by the end of the day I can’t always recall how many I’ve had. Here are some ways to help:
- Bottle Bag. If you drink bottled water, find a bag or container to hold all the bottles you’ll need for the day. If my goal is to drink 64 oz, then I’ll load 4 bottles up and then discard/recycle the bottles when finished. When my container is empty, I know I’ve achieved my daily goal!
- Install an App or Tracker on your Phone or Computer. On apps, such as My Fitness Pal, you can input each glass of water into your diary as you go about your day. You could also create a note on NotePad on your electronic devices to keep track of it yourself.
- Daily Log. If you’re a little more old-school or are more of a visual person, then you may want to have a logbook of sorts to monitor your intake. You could create a graph (or use a template from excel or online), and check it off as you go. For example, if I’m still aiming for my 64 oz, drinking my 16.9 oz bottles, and using this tracking system, I would create 4 tic-boxes. Each bottle I finish, I check off 1 tic-box. Or, I recently received this little gem from one of my favorite things, the Passion Planner. I know that each raindrop is one of my 16.9 bottles, so I color it or check each raindrop when I’ve finished a bottle. You could mark or cut off any you’re not using. Hope this helps you!

As you can see, these are 4 relatively simple ways to adjust your water consumption. If you’ve struggled to increase the amount of water your drinking each day, I suggest you try at least one of these methods, or all of them! Give it a go for the next 3 or 4 days, then post your comments about it in the comments. Do you have other suggestions we can try? Please share with us! We will post additional suggestions at least one other time throughout the challenge, and we’d love to include ideas from you!