Water: Top 3 Hacks To Make Sure You Drink Enough
Water is easy to dismiss, but if you are experiencing constipation or diarrhea water is especially important! In fact, it needs to be a non-negotiable.
Dehydration is often a causer of constipation and is a consequence of diarrhea. You know you need to drink it, but the frequent visits to the bathroom seem super unappealing and you figure coffee will just do the trick.
Sorry to break it to you, but coffee or any caffeinated beverage for that matter is further dehydrating you. For every cup of jo, you need to drink 2 cups of water to make up for the dehydrating effects of caffeine.
Whether you love or hate coffee, dehydration is not an option if you plan on fixing your gut. Here are my top 3 strategies to make sure you drink enough water each day.
1. Download A Water Reminder App
It's simply a matter of priorities and the truth is if you are struggling to drink your water, it's probably not a big priority for you. In order to break that habit, we need to be reminded and relying on your memory probably isn't going to do the trick!
There are a number of great water reminder apps out there that allow you to customize your profile giving you your personalized daily requirement of water and hourly reminders to give you that gentle nudge you need to get drinking!
2. Spice It Up
Plain water gets boring sometimes and when you are fresh off of juice, pop, or anything flavoured for that matter, drinking plain old water isn't going to have you running to fill up your cup.
Infusing your water with lemons, limes, frozen berries, cucumbers, basil or mint can allow you to enjoy a variety of flavours that will have your tastebuds dancing (oo how exciting!)
Not only do fruits and herbs do the trick, but herbal tea will as well. The most important thing to remember is to be drinking caffeine free teas, to make sure you are hydrating and not dehyrating yourself. Here are some of my fav herbal tea recipes.
If you are reducing or eliminating your coffee, here are some tea combos that are lightly caffeinated to help you bridge the gap between caffeine and no caffeine. Just ice and enjoy:
Green Tea + Blueberry Tea
White Tea + Peach Tea
3. Set Rules
There are two rules that I live by to ensure I am drinking enough water.
Drink from a 1L mason jar
The water game is really just a mind game. Flavoured water feels special compared to plain water and 4 (500ml) bottles of water feels a lot easier than 2 (1L) jars. No flavour vs. flavour, 4 vs 2... what do you think your mind is going to pick?
2. You must drink 1L of water before lunch time.
This rule is important! I set this rule for myself because I noticed that when I started drinking earlier in the day, I was more likely to keep drinking as the day went on and hit my water goal. I also noticed if I didn't start drinking by lunch, I'd probably keep that going and often not end up drinking ANY fluids.
I LOVE food and so part of this rule was lunch wasn't happening until this 1L happened. If you are hitting 11am and you know hunger is setting in and lunch is around the corner... guess what friend, you want lunch? It's time to get drinking!
