It’s easy to get too busy to drink enough water. Many people don’t like plain water and prefer sugary drinks. But water is essential to life and to health. Here are 15 methods to use to trick yourself into drinking more water daily.
15. Buy a Reusable Water Bottle
Purchase a reusable water bottle and then make it a habit of taking it with you wherever you go. Make it something stylish and spend some money on it so you’ll feel guilty if you don’t use it. Most public facilities have drinking fountains, so it’s easy to refill. Wherever you are, keep it in your line of vision.
14. Mark Your Bottle
If you have a water bottle that allows you to write on it with a dry erase marker (or you can apply a slick sticker), you can track your drinking progress. Draw lines indicating ounces that designate your goals for how many ounces you want to drink by at certain times. Once empty, erase the lines and start over.
13. Add Flavors
If you can’t handle drinking plain water, there are healthy ways to flavor your water such as using lemon, cucumber, or berries. There are also packets that can add these flavors using only natural ingredients. You can also buy a water bottle with a built-in fruit infuser. This brings the benefit of adding antioxidants and vitamins from the fruit.
12. Set Reminders on Your Phone
If you’re like most people, you’re probably never far from your phone. Take advantage of your phone’s reminders or calendar app and use it to stay on track with your hydration goals. Set a repeating daily schedule, that way you only have to set up reminders the first time and they will be on autopilot after that.
11. Use a Water Tracking App
If you want to take your commitment to drinking more water to the next level, use technology and employ a water tracking app. You can set reminders of when to drink and also track your water intake. Multiple water apps are available. Additional features include setting goals and earning points for achieving your hydration targets.
10. Chug Water When You Wake Up
It’s a good idea to start your day by chugging a lot of water when you wake up. Your body needs it. It hasn’t had any water for 6-10 hours, depending how long you’ve slept. As an added bonus, drinking at least 12 ounces of water first thing in the morning, before eating, will boost your metabolism.
9. Eat Your Water
Another way of ensuring that you are properly hydrated is to consume foods that have a very high water content. This includes fruits and vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelon, grapes, and grapefruit. You can snack on these throughout the day or have a salad with raw vegetables for lunch.
8. Try a Different Kind of Water
Even if you have no problem drinking plain water, you may want to mix things up for a little variety. You can substitute mineral water or seltzer water to liven up your beverage, while avoiding any added sugars. However, it’s important to go easy on carbonated water, which contains carbonic acid and can damage tooth enamel.
7. Turn It into a Competition
You can compete with yourself or others when it comes to hitting hydration goals. Using a water tracking app, you can compete with yourself to make and break water consumption streaks. You can create a competition with others, tracking it on paper or a board or an app. Create some kind of reward for the winner (or yourself) each Friday.
6. Balance Your Alcohol
Alcohol has a diuretic effect, making you urinate more than usual. This causes dehydration due to the loss of water and electrolytes. Dehydration is also why you feel hung over after a night of drinking. Drink water before and after alcohol consumption. Keep a glass of water by your bed to rehydrate yourself if you wake up during the night.
5. Exercise More
Yes, exercise makes you sweat, and will cause you to lose water. However, exercising naturally makes your body want to replace that lost water with more water. Thus, exercising will make you drink more. Be sure to drink only plain water. Don’t be swayed by the advertising gimmicks and turn to refueling with a sugary sports drink.
4. Use Incentives for Meeting/Missing Goals
Everyone is motivated by incentives. Therefore, reward yourself with something for achieving your weekly hydration goals. Buy yourself something. You’ve earned a treat, but try to make it something not related to food. Conversely, give yourself a tiny “punishment” for failing, such as an extra set of squats at the gym (choose a consequence that’s actually a benefit).
3. Make Your Own Flavored Frozen Ice Pops
Consume more water by making your own healthy frozen ice pops. They can be flavored with lemons, oranges, cucumbers, berries, or whatever fruit you like. You can also use natural-flavored powders that have no added sugar. All you need is a mold. Freeze overnight and you have a healthy frozen treat that will get more water in your system.
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2. Find a Drinking Buddy
Studies show most Americans are chronically dehydrated. So it won’t be hard to find a drinking buddy that, like you, needs to drink more water. Having to be accountable to another person makes it easier to stay on track, as you can encourage one another. Expect up and down days, but stick with it.
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1. Learn to Love Pure Water
Drinking more water is about adopting a mindset change. Use mind over matter to shift your cravings away from sugary drinks and toward a desire for the fresh, pure taste of plain water. Buy filtered water at first to get started if need be. Before long, water will be your beverage of choice and a regular part of your daily routine.
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