I wanted to recap how my water drinking challenge went. Spoiler alert: I failed!

My goal was to drink half my body weight in ounces of water each day for three weeks. I did pretty well for a week and then it all went to pot.

I guess I shouldn’t call it a complete failure though because four weeks later, I am drinking more water every day than before I attempted the challenge.

Here’s how it went:

The first couple of days I felt really water-logged and like I couldn’t possibly drink any more water. I visited the restroom A LOT.

I quickly realized that I needed to get an early start if I was going to drink enough in a day. On more successful days, I drank a glass of water right away when I woke up.

I found that if I didn’t have my water bottle sitting next to me, I forgot about it. On day 3, I left my water bottle in the fridge and kept forgetting to drink it.

By the end of the first week, I noticed that my body seemed to want more water. I felt thirsty much more often than ever before which I think was a good thing.

After the first week, things went downhill and I kept forgetting to pay attention to my water consumption. However, I have my water bottle sitting next to me while I type this and it’s almost empty, so that’s good!

I’ve definitely been drinking more water than I used to, but I’m sure I’m still falling short of half my body weight in ounces each day.

How to Drink More Water (and how to fail at it)

Why I failed

I discovered that it’s not good to attempt to start a new habit when life is abnormally crazy.

On week two of the challenge, we bought a house. Every day after that was spent working on the house, cleaning, packing, and moving. I just didn’t have the ability to focus on creating a new habit.

I knew that we’d probably be closing on the house during the challenge, but I decided to do it anyway because I thought, “I can’t wait for life to calm down to try to do this. Life is always crazy.”

I didn’t want busyness to be an excuse for not working on something important.

I can see now that while life is always crazy-busy, buying a house made my life abnormally crazy for a short amount of time. I should have waited until that was done. In fact, I may try again in a few months.

The moral of my story is not to let busyness be an excuse for not focusing on creating a healthy habit. But if you know your life will be abnormally crazy for a short amount of time, then maybe it’s best to wait.

Positive Results

Even though I still am not drinking the recommended amount of water, I have seen some positive results from drinking more water.

I have had noticeably fewer headaches since I’ve been drinking more water each day.

I’ve been ordering water more often at restaurants, partly because I crave it more now and partly because I know I need it. It’s easier on the wallet too.

I’ve also been able to have a better start to my mornings when I drink a cold glass of water first thing. It tends to wake me up and get me going.

How to Drink More Water

Again, even though I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, I did still learn a lot of tips that have continued to help me stay more hydrated.

• Get an early start. Drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning helped start my day, get an extra bit of water in, and set me up to drink more throughout the rest of the day.
• Put it on your to do list. For days, I had it on my daily to do list to drink water. It was a great reminder for me and it felt good to check it off my list! (I have this to do list that has a water drinking tracker on it)
• Use a water bottle you love. I love my Contigo water bottle because it has a spout to drink out of. It’s convenient and easy to keep with me, so I think it helped me drink more.
• Use water you love. If you like flavored water, make sure you have it. If you like sparkling water, make sure you have that. I like really cold water, so I put a pitcher of water in the fridge every night before bed. Having good water helps!
• Keep it with you. If you constantly keep your water bottle or cup with you, even as you move from room to room in your house, you’re more likely to take a drink here and there.
• Order water first at restaurants. You can always order a soda or something else when your meal comes, but if you have a glass of water in front of you, you’ll probably drink it.
• Take pills with more water. I used to swallow my pills or vitamins with just a bit of water. Now I see it as an easy way to drink more water. I end up drinking close to a full glass of water if I drink more with each pill and vitamin I take.

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⇒ Do you drink enough water? What are your tips?