The Off-Season WLC Skill Practices are mini-challenges intended to help you fine-tune different aspects of your health and wellness. Offered between Challenges, these weekly practices address fitness, nutrition, stress reduction, productivity, and personal connection — because health is about far more than food and the gym (and we could all use a little practice).
Drink Water with Each Meal and Snack This Week
Simple Instructions:
- Each day this week, when you eat a meal or have a snack, drink a glass of water.
- By “glass,” we mean 8oz.
- You can drink the water before or during your meal/snack. Some people find drinking before a meal curbs their appetite a little, so this may be useful for you if you’re working on weight loss.
- The intention of this practice is not to take in a specific total amount of water over the course of the day, but to practice one strategy for never forgetting to drink water. This practice is a great warm-up for the Hydration habit that is a part of the upcoming January Challenge.
Why Is This Practice Important?
Water is life. We are water, in fact. The average adult human is composed of 50-65% water.
When you feel thirsty, it means you have already lost 2-3% of your body’s water, and it takes surprisingly little water loss to make your brain not work very well.
In 2011, The Journal of Nutrition published a study that was conducted on 35 women. The study determined it took only a 1.36% drop in hydration to induce a bad mood, difficulty completing tasks, lower concentration levels, and headaches. Sounds like all the reasons I normally pop an Excedrin. It also sounds like I should just try drinking more water instead.
Not to mention, water is the building block of all our cells, it helps us regulate our body temperature, it is necessary to properly metabolize our food, it lubricates our joints, it cleans our body of toxins and waste, and it cushions all the parts of our nervous system. Put simply, not being properly hydrated can make you fat, tired, and weak.
And check out this crazy chart from a study done on a 35-year-old cadaver, published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry in 1945:
This person’s brain was composed of 73% water, as was his heart. Do you really want to short your brain and heart function by forgetting to drink water?
Look at that chart and how our vital organs are made of so much water. Imagine all the things that would not work without proper hydration. Now think back on your day so far — did you drink any water?
