How To Lose Weight Series - Habit 6

“Water is the elixir of life.”

As all of us are already aware of, water is certainly one of the most important elements to sustain life since the body is about 60% water.

Whenever I read about this two quick queries engulfed my mind — one is how do I know how much water should I be drinking daily and second how do I even try and keep a tab on this.

Having a body type that does not sweat a lot and in a climate type where one does not feel thirsty very easily, it is very easy to fall into the trap of drinking very little water through the day conscientiously.

How much water should I be drinking everyday?

Based on your body weight and climatic conditions, there are calculators available to determine how many liters of water one should consume per day.

How to Keep a Tab On Water consumed per day is sufficient to keep your body hydrated?

Its actually simple. Just have a look at the color of the urine the next time you urinate, if its nearly white or pale yellow means you are well hydrated, and if the color gets very dark yellow, you need to hydrate ASAP. If the color is orangish yellow or darker seek medical help immediately.

How do I make a habit of this?

I must confess that initially even I never paid too much attention to this aspect of life, there was quite a lot to think over anyway.

The following two steps have helped me enhance my water consumption patterns:

• If I don’t find the color of my urine nearly white, immediately once am out of the loo, have a huge glass of water.

• I have a wonderful red colored bottle (gifted by my thoughtful husband) which helps me take sips of water throughout the day. I initially had the normal plastic bottles which had a cap that had to be opened to drink water. Just this little extra effort that was involved, would leave me having water when I was very thirsty only.

• The product design of having this plastic straw like inbuilt mechanism on the bottle just enables me to take quick sips in between work. Its just convenient and gets the required quantity in. After all every drop makes the ocean, right?

If you feel you are getting slightly bored with just plain water consumption, you can mix and match certain days by adding in some vitamins to it.

Drink your way to health this week and do share your feedback on how easy it was to get this habit inculcated into your DNA.

References:

www.h4hinitiative.com

www.healthline.com how much water you should drink per day

Drinking Enough Water — Topic Overview — WebMD

Are you Dephydrated? www.dripdrop.com

Daily Water Intake Calculator. www.medindia.net