New week, new challenge!!

If you're anything like me you don't drink enough water throughout the day. Coffee yes, wine of course, but definitely not enough water. I might get 16oz in during the day but not much more. It's not the I boycott water, it just doesn't enter my mind with all the other drink choices available to me. Recently I read an article about how a woman challenged herself to drink a gallon of water a day for an entire month. At the end of the month she not only noticed that she shed water weight she didn't know she had, she also noticed that she looked younger-her skin was brighter and more supple, bags under her eyes were gone and her skin was glowing in a way it hadn't since she was young! Amazing results all from drinking more water, who knew?!?

It's kind of an awkward time to start a challenge, given that it's the middle of the month but I'm going to issue one anyway. Since tomorrow is Monday, the start of a new week, I challenge you, as well as myself, to drink a gallon of water throughout the day for one month to see how much better we feel and look. At the end of that month we will decide if it's something worth implementing in our life in a permanent basis. 

                                                     

During this month challenge track your progress. I've found an easy way to track our water intake- there an app called "Water Alert"- it is free in the iPhone App Store. If you have an Android I believe it's in your App Store as well and is also free.  "Water Alert" is customizable, so you can change the amount of your intake goal (which for this challenge is a gallon) and the size of cups drank. I recommend making a few different cup size options for easy logging.

My cups sizes are set to the following:

Bottle- 22.o oz (the size of most large water bottles)

Large cup- 16.0 oz (the size of a large glass of water, or a small water bottle)

Small cup- 8.0 oz (the size of a normal glass of water)

The app has a default for daily water consumption. Because our challenge is a gallon a day you will need to change the default daily intake to reflect 128.0 oz, which equals one gallon. 

In the settings you should also choose the option that lets you know what percentage of your goal you have left so you see how much you've accomplished (the percentage that you've drank isn't as gratifying).

If you need a reminder there is also a setting for "water alerts."  If you choose this option a little alert will pop up when it's time to drink water.  The settings have preset water times, but you can customize it to times that work for you.

The app will also log your daily intake so you can look back at your progress thoughts the week/month.  The woman in the article I read took pictures throughout her month long water challenge, you can do this too!  This might be a good idea to try, since it will show the different in your skin, which may be hard to see since you see yourself each day and change is gradual.

.I recommend placing the app on the first page of your phone screen so you see it each time you turn on your phone.  As you can see by the screen shot of my phone, your "Water Alert" app will display a bade at the top right corner, which is easy to see and hard to miss, so you should be reminded easier that you still have progress left on your faily goal of water intake.

This is a challenge but one I think we all can do and one that I think will give us all great results. We can still drink our coffee, tea, and wine, we will just integrate more water into our life instead of more of the other. Let me know how your month goes and I'll let you know how mine is going.