How To Get Good At Hydration! psst it’s about habits ;)

In last post, I covered WHY it’s important to hydrate as well as HOW much you should be drinking.

In this post I am going to approach how you ACTUALLY do it. The HOW TO GUIDE with tips and tricks that will help you create the HABIT of drinking more water on daily basis.

It’s simple, like common sense super simple and easy but yet very very effective.

By focusing on creating habits, that stick, you don’t have to “remember” to do it - And you won’t JUST do it for 3 days and then forget all about it starting on square one.

To get better at drinking more water we are going to take advantage of the science that is out there about habit formation, and we are going to MAKE IT EASY, CREATE VISUAL REMINDERS and MAKE IT REWARDING. So that your habit loop keeps re-enforcing itself taking care of all the hard work for you.

That means this action becomes easier and easier as you go and you eventually do not need to think about it anymore -and it becomes an integrated part of you, just one more of the things you do to feel good!

LET’S DIVE IN

My favourite advice to build Hydration HABITS:

Make It Easy:

• Get a nice water-bottle that keeps the water cold - 500 ml or bigger. Choose a design you want to carry with your everywhere you go.

• Then keep it by your side, when at work, in the car, in the gym, in meetings etc. Making it easy approachable at all times avoids you having to think about it, pulling over to buy water or getting to lunch time and realizing you have not had any water yet.

Create Visual/Virtual Reminders:

• Place hair bands around your wrist for the amount of water bottles you need to finish. Start in the morning with 4-6 Hairbands around your wrist (depending on the water you need to consume that day). See Calculations. Each time you finish 1 water bottle move one band over to the bottle. This helps you keep a visual reminder on your wrist of how many you have left for the day.

• Draw set amount of boxes at the top of the page on your calendar or daily planer/ todo list, tick of one box for each water bottle you finish

• Set a reminder on your phone or deadlines for timings you need to finish your bottles - Drink 500 ml upon waking, 500 ml with your lunch, 500 ml before your afternoon coffee OR set a recurring alarm/reminder every 3-4 hours for same purpose.

Make it Rewarding:

• This is awkward but I Mental High Five myself every time I go to the bathroom and my pee is clear……. almost ashamed sharing this but you can create your own littler body science effect. Look out for positive effects in the first few days you drink water, and note them down - take a moment to appreciate them. You can look out for pee color, clearer skin, less bags under your eyes, feeling less hungry or less bloating when you drink more water

• Rewards can also be the sense of satisfaction when you tick all the boxes off in your journal if you are a TO DO satisfaction freak, or mental high five when you have moved all your hairbands from your wrist to the water bottle.

• Rewarding yourself with something you would like to buy the end of 7 days where you complete all your water bottles etc.

IMPLEMENTATION TIME!

Now it’s time to start your little project on yourself.

FIRST choose at least one item from each category to try, and then start implementing.

Give yourself about 4-7 days where you are not allowed to beat yourself up at all, if you don’t quite finish the set amount of water.

Your goal here should be to increase your water intake slightly from baseline. You do this by start noticing these REMINDERS and REWARDS some of the time. And complimenting yourself for the progress made. If you beat yourself up about it, you are making it even harder for yourself to stick to it.

As you know Rome Was Not Built In One Day, or One Week. So be kind to yourself, compliment yourself for small progresses and steps, and keep reflecting on your progress and keep trying. Maybe check out Why You Should Be Journaling for more tips and tricks about deliberate reflections to speed up your progress.

Im super excited to hear how it goes, let me know if you try any of these by tagging me on IG @eikgylfadottir when you are testing some of these out!

All for now, stay hydrated and healthy my friend!