Monday Resolution: Drink More Water

For all I sneered at “Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Big?”, I have been decluttering like mad since last week. I am forced to admit that there does seem to be a connection between the part of me that clutters up rooms with rubbish and the part of me that clutters up my body with fat. I plan to give it a couple of weeks and then do a proper post about it.

Today I am putting one aspect of it into practice. To date, I have been the sort of person who decides that they will take five days off an completely revolutionise their living space in that time, only to run out of steam halfway through and end up just stacking the stuff back where they found it. This is why my wardrobe is full of stuff dating back to 1992. I have tended to adopt the same approach with dieting: I spring out of bed, spend three days living on nothing but healthy food, adopt fifty thousand new healthy habits, lose track of all of them within three days and then nose-dive into a Mighty Meaty on Day 4.

I do not do this anymore.  Having looked at a few sites about home organisation and housekeeping, I have discovered that it’s more effective to do things a bit at a time, and in particular add new good habits one at a time, and giving them a chance to sink in before you add another one. That way you don’t overload yourself. And so I decree that this week’s habit shall be Drinking Enough Water.

I am officially dehydrated. Fact. The week before last I did my body stats with my personal trainer, rather like Wendy did with hers. In short, everything apart from my body fat percentage and my water percentage is in order.

Drinking water is supposed to be key to weight loss. I’ve heard different explanations for this. They include:
1.We are not very good at differentiating thirst and hunger so sometimes we eat when we are thirsty.

2.Water flushes out toxins and gets your organs working faster, making your digestive system more efficient.

3.Drinking water fools your body into thinking that you are full and therefore stops you from being hungry.

I don’t know if any of these are true or not. I have always been a bit sceptical about the whole water-drinking directive. Two litres a day? That’s TONS. It makes me feel as if I’m swimming in my own skin. And my job involves quite a lot of public speaking; I can’t really be leaping up to run to the loo every five minutes. Yes, when I drink lots of water my skin improves (although there’s usually a period of a week or so where it breaks out all over the shop first; yes, I do seem to lose weight – but I have never been convinced that this is down to the water.When I concentrate on drinking 8 glasses of water a day, I’m usually watching my weight and looking after myself generally, which includes eating lots of fruit and vegetables and healthy food generally, so I don’t really know how many of these improvements are down to water, or exercise, or healthy eating. And besides, whenever I am thirsty, I drink, so I had always assumed that I was fine on the water front.

I now discover that I am officially dehydrated, although that could be because I ignored my trainer’s advice and drank a cup of coffee an hour before the session. I also did a bit of reading, and discovered that by the time you are thirsty you are already dehydrated, which may mean that drinking only when you are thirsty isn’t enough, and that you should be drinking little and often throughout the day whether you are actively thirsty or not.

Me: “Like my dog? My dog just has a few slurps here and there all the way through the day.”

Personal trainer (dubiously): “Okay.”

So. I should, apparently, be aiming for 2 litres of water a day, and more if I have been working out, and I will be trying that this week and reporting back. Which will be FASCINATING I’m sure.