Steve: How to drink more water? Use my new water trick!

I got an email newsletter from Richard Simmons a few days ago and it was focusing on drinking eight cups of water a day… I’ll admit that I have been very bad at this for a long time… I bring a bottle of water with me to work pretty much every day, but by the time I am leaving I have only consumed 8 oz or so.. and then when I get home I don’t do any better… I do drink my 16 oz of decaf green tea almost every weekday, but not water.

So I decided to figure out a way to get this working… and here is what I have come up with.  First off, this will work with any type of water bottle, I just am using a 50 oz, Trader Joe’s Electrolyte Enhanced water bottle (Their version of SmartWater).  I refill this bottle from our filtered water dispenser in our refrigeration at night.  My goal is to get almost 7 servings consumed in from 8 am to 3 pm… 7 hours.

Along with your favorite, empty water container you will also need a measuring cup, a funnel and a sharpie marker.

Put 8 oz of tap water in the measuring cup and (using the funnel) pour that water into the empty container… now with the container sitting on a counter or table put a mark on it with the Sharpie right where the water line is… now add another 8 oz and mark again… keep doing this until the bottle is full. (in my case I get 7 marks on my bottle)  Next I wrote (Starting at the top mark) the time I would start drinking everyday (8 am) and then working my way down to the next mark I wrote 9 am… then 10 am.. The last mark on my bottle says 2 pm…

So now when I have the bottle on my desk with the marks facing me I have an hourly goal… the water level should be at or below each mark when the time listed hits… so at 10 am the water should be at or below the 10 am line…

I also figured out that for me to drink 8 oz of water it takes 9-10 normal swallows… I can do it in 8, but why stress… so when I look over and see that it is almost 12 and the water is halfway between 11 and 12, I grab the bottle and take 4 or 5 swallows and I am back on track…

Now, you will need to be prepared to excuse yourself more often for the restroom of course… but so far so good on this method.

Happy Hydrating!