We should all be drinking at least two litres of water every day but most people do not reach this amount. If you do not drink enough water on a daily basis this can lead to you being dehydrated.
Dehydration can cause many side effects including headaches, fatigue and hunger pains. So let's go through some basic tips to help your uptake of water.
Get into a good routine
Like most things in life, when you get into a good routine of doing things it becomes a lot easier to maintain doing them. So work out a daily routine for your drinking water habits.
A good place to start is as soon as you wake up in the morning. Before even thinking about making your breakfast, grab yourself a pint glass of water and get drinking. Drinking water first thing in the morning can really help wake you up and start your day in the right way.
If you are somebody who likes to drink lots of fizzy soft drinks try to replace those with water. It's not only a healthier option, as most fizzy drinks have hidden sugars in them, but will also save you money, as water is generally free or at least much cheaper than a can of fizzy pop.
At mealtimes, make sure your meal is accompanied by a large glass of water. These are all simple and easy things you can do to get yourself drinking more water and the more often you do this daily the more of a good routine you will get into.
Is too much water bad for you?
Much like not drinking enough water is bad for you, so is drinking too much. There is a happy medium level that we should all try to reach. But how do we work out how much water we should actually be drinking, and monitoring our daily intake?
One easy and simple method to keep track of your daily water intake is by using a simple but effective daily water intake calculator. This will help determine how much water you have taken on board and how much more you should be drinking.
Another simple method would be by keeping a water diary. Every time you drink some water, make a quick note in your diary to help you keep track of your daily intake. By doing this you will soon discover if you are drinking enough water or not and then can adjust your routine accordingly.
Keeping your intake up whatever the weather
It's important to maintain your good water drinking habits all year round but while you may find it easier to do so in the hot weather months it can be harder during the winter season.
Why not try drinking more tea during the colder months, especially green tea and other varieties that have no caffeine in them.
Monsoon season that brings plenty of rain can be a hard time to remember to drink more water but why not use the fact the weather outside is a wet as another reminder to drink more.
Drink from larger water containers or bottles
Instead of using small cups or glasses try and use big pint-sized glasses to help increase how much water you are drinking.
The same goes with using water bottles when you are out and about, buy yourself a large bottle or container as then you won't need to keep refilling it up as often.
Try and set yourself daily goals of making sure that you drink all of the water inside your bottle that you use. Then try and increase that amount to two bottles and so on and by doing this every day will certainly help increase the amount of water you drink over time.
Add flavour to your water
Some people find drinking water as very boring as it is pretty much tasteless. People who are used to drinking fizzy pop drinks or juice may struggle more as they are used to drinking drinks that are full of flavour.
If you struggle with the same boring taste of water then why not add some flavour to the water by adding some fruit to your drink. Lemon, lime or orange slices work very well with water but you could also try adding sliced cucumbers, fresh mint leaves or basil to give it some extra taste.
There are special water bottles available to buy that can help infuse the added fruit to your water but keeping them in a separate part of the bottle, so that they don't become too soggy.
Set yourself reminders
A lot of us lead very busy lifestyles so it can be easy to forget about drinking water when we are rushing around doing a hundred and one other things.
One way to combat this is to set yourself reminders or alarms on your phone to help you to remember to keep on drinking water throughout the day.
If you struggle to remember to drink water while at work or at home then set different alarms and reminders on your phone at different points throughout the day. It's likely you would remember to drink water with meal times but it's all the other times of the day that you may struggle with so set alarms to remind you at these points of your day.
Keep a water bottle with you at all times
Keeping a reusable water bottle will not only help remind you to keep drinking throughout the day but it's also going to save you money in the long run as buying fresh bottles of water to
drink each day can become very expensive.
It's also better for the environment to use reusable bottles as this way it will help keep your carbon footprint low and help with less plastic polluting the planet.
Try and buy at least two to three reusable water bottles so that you can keep them clean and rotate them around every day.