Category Archives: Water

The Water Habit

52 ounces of water

You see that water? You know how much water is in that carafe? There’s 52 ounces in that puppy.

Know how I know? Cause I measured it. I did the calculation and that’s how much water I need to drink every day.  (your weight in pounds, divided by 2, equals your minimum required ounces a day._

You know how much water I actually drink every day? A cup. Maybe.

I don’t like water. It makes me pee. I hate to pee. But I know that if I force myself to drink this 52 ounce carafe of water every day, and I PERSIST with it, the chronic peeing eventually stops and I do feel a lot better.

I go through these “water jags” where I am all over this water-drinking shit: squeezing fresh lemon juice into it and everything, and then for some inexplicable reason, I just stop. Because it’s not a habit, so I revert back into camel- in-the-desert-mode.

Today I came across this website called 21 Habits. It has a paid version and a free version and it works like this:

You sign up and state the habit you want to cultivate for the next 21 days. If you use the free version, you just log in every day and fess up. Did you do it? Or not?  If you want to do the “commited” version, you pay $21 dollars, and if you do what you pledged you’d do, you keep your money. Every day you “miss” they subtract one dollar from your account and give it to charity.

Pretty cool, no?  Yeah, I thought so. So I joined today. I am going to see if I can choke down those 52 ounces every day.

Water Resistant

I have made the “Drink More Water” resolution every New Year’s Eve for at least the past 20 years. No lie.

I go on week-long streaks of water-drinking, then revert back to “camel” mode where I don’t drink much of anything (except my morning coffee) for months on end.

Even though Tim wrote it explicitly on my training schedule that I was to drink LOTS OF WATER on the 2 days prior to the Half Marathon, did I?

No.

Did I carry a heavy camelback filled with water on the trail?  Yes I did.

Did I drink that heavy camelback filled with water on the trail?  Welll..,sorta. I drank some of it.

So yesterday, and today, I am trying to replenish fluids by drinking massive amounts of water because I felt terrible yesterday and it was all because I was dehydrated.

I have to find a way to make water drinking more palatable and a permanent habit.

Suggestions?  Anybody been “water-resistant” and overcome it?