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Drinking more water exercises

Health Area(s): Anxiety, Brain Power, Depression, Emotional, Intellectual, IQ, Physical, Sleep, Stress, Water
Health Area(s): Anxiety, Brain Power, Depression, Emotional, Intellectual, IQ, Physical, Sleep, Stress, Water

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The following was written by SaVanna Shoemaker, MS, RDN, LD and published by healthline:

12 Simple Ways to Drink More Water
Your body is about 70% water, and drinking enough of it is vital for optimal health.

Water plays many roles in your body, including maintaining electrolyte balance and blood pressure, lubricating joints, regulating body temperature, and promoting cell health.

While everyone knows that it’s important to stay hydrated, doing so can be difficult at times.

Here are 12 simple ways to drink more water.

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Study, educate and create an action plan of activity

The following was written by SaVanna Shoemaker, MS, RDN, LD and published by healthline:

1. Understand your fluid needs
Before you decide to drink more water, you have to understand your body’s fluid needs.
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) recommends that men consume 125 ounces (3,700 ml) and women about 90 ounces (2,700 ml) of fluid per day, including the fluid from water, other drinks, and foods.
However, NAM acknowledges that it isn’t ideal to make broad recommendations about fluid needs, as they depend on your activity level, location, health status, and more.
For most, simply drinking to quench your thirst will ensure you meet your fluid needs. Yet, you may need more fluid if you exercise regularly, work outside, or live in a hot climate.
2. Set a daily goal
Setting a daily water intake goal can help you drink more water.
Simply the act of setting a goal can be motivating and make you more likely to make positive changes that last.
To be effective, goals should be SMART, which is an acronym for the following criteria:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-bound
For example, one SMART water-consumption goal might be to drink 32 ounces (960 ml) of water per day.
It can also help to record your progress, which can keep you motivated to achieve your goal — and make it a habit.
3. Keep a reusable water bottle with you
Keeping a water bottle with you throughout the day can help you drink more water.
When you have a reusable water bottle, you can easily drink water in any setting, whether you’re running errands, traveling, or at home, work, or school.
Keeping a water bottle handy can also serve as a visual reminder to drink more water. If you see the bottle on your desk or table, you will constantly be reminded to drink more.
Plus, it’s better for the environment than relying on single-use plastic water bottles.
4. Set reminders
You can also set reminders to drink more water using an app or the alarm on your smartphone or smartwatch.
For example, try setting a reminder to take a few sips of water every 30 minutes, or set a reminder to finish drinking your current glass of water and refill it every hour.
These reminders can help you increase your water intake, especially if you struggle with being forgetful or too busy to drink.
5. Replace other drinks with water
One way to drink more water — and boost your health and reduce your calorie intake — is to replace other drinks, such as soda and sports drinks, with water.
These drinks are often full of added sugars, which can be extremely detrimental to your health.
For optimal health, limit your added sugar intake to less than 5% of your calorie intake. Just one 8-ounce (240 ml) cup of soda per day can exceed this limit.
Diets high in added sugars have been linked to obesity and other conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Furthermore, replacing these sugary drinks with water is an easy and cheap way to cut calories, potentially helping you lose weight.
6. Drink one glass of water before each meal
Another simple way to increase your water intake is to make a habit of drinking one glass of water before each meal.
If you eat 3 meals per day, this adds an extra 3 cups (720 ml) to your daily water intake.
Moreover, sometimes your body may mistake feelings of thirst for hunger. Drinking a glass of water before eating can help you discern whether you are feeling true hunger.
What’s more, if you’re trying to lose weight, drinking a glass of water may help you eat fewer calories at the following meal.
7. Get a water filter
In UK, most tap water is safe to drink. However, if you have concerns about the quality or safety of your tap water, consider purchasing a water filter.
There is a filter for almost every budget, from costly whole-home water filtration systems to inexpensive water-filtering pitchers.
In addition, filtering your water could improve the taste.
Point-of-use water filters, such as water-filtering pitchers or filters that attach directly to a faucet, can reduce levels of waterborne bacteria, lead, and arsenic in contaminated tap water to safe levels.
Using a water filter is also less expensive and more eco-friendly than purchasing bottled water, which is oftentimes no different than tap water
8. Flavour your water
If you dislike the flavour of water, or just need a bit of flavour to help you drink more, you have many choices.
Using an inexpensive fruit-infuser water bottle is one healthy option.
Popular fruit combinations to use in an infuser bottle are cucumber-lime, lemon, and strawberry-kiwi. Although, you can use any combination of fruits that suits your taste.
You can also purchase water enhancers in powder or liquid form to add to your water, but be aware that many of these products contain sugar, artificial sweeteners, or other additives that may harm your health.
9. Drink one glass of water per hour at work
If you work a standard 8-hour workday, drinking a glass of water each hour you’re at work adds up to 8 cups (1,920 ml) to your daily water intake.
Fill up your cup as soon as you get to work, and at the top of every hour, simply drink the remaining water and refill.
This method will keep your water intake consistent throughout your workday.
10. Sip throughout the day
Sipping on water consistently throughout the day is another easy way to help you meet your fluid goals.
Reaching for a sip of water consistently during your day will keep your mouth from getting dry and may even help keep your breath fresher.
Keep a glass of water or a reusable bottle nearby and within your line of sight for a constant visual reminder to take a sip
11. Eat more foods high in water
One simple way to get more water is to eat more foods that are high in water.
Fruits and vegetables that are particularly high in water include:
Lettuce: 96%
Celery: 95%
Zucchini: 95%
Cabbage: 92%
Watermelon: 91%
Cantaloupe: 90%
Honeydew melon: 90% water.
In addition to their high fluid content, these fruits and vegetables are packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that promote your overall health.
12. Drink one glass of water when you wake up and before bed
An easy way to boost your water intake is to simply drink one glass when you wake up and another before you go to bed.
A glass of cold water in the morning may help wake you up and boost your alertness.
Plus, drinking water before bed can keep you from waking up with a dry mouth and bad breath.

We suggest a frequency of: Each day
and it could last 15
minutes

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How much water should you drink a day?
So important to flush out your system
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8 Health Benefits Of Drinking Water
Summary: Wondering how to lose weight? Water has many different health benefits, but not enough people know about all these health benefits. It is pretty common knowledge that the majority of the human body is composed of water. Yet, from time to time, we still don’t drink enough water and we catch ourselves being dehydrated. Some signs of dehydration are increased thirst, being tired or sleepy, dry mouth, decreased urine output, headache, dry skin, dizziness and urine of a darker hue. An indication that we are getting enough water into our system is frequent or regular urination throughout the day. The goal is to urinate 7 to 10 times a day, with at least 5 to 7 of those times being clear urine. If you see that your urine is getting a little dark, be sure to gulp down a tall glass of water! Whether you’re drinking water to lose weight or are just interested in finding out what happens when you drink water on an empty stomach, you have reached the right place!By drinking cold water, you increase the risk of getting sick. The reason for this is that cold water decreases the function of the immune system which is caused by the creation of excess mucus in the body because of drinking cold water.In addition, research from the European Journal of Pharmaceutical and Medical Research showed that drinking cold water at that temperature can make your blood vessels become smaller and restrict your ability to digest food properly. There’s a lot of confusion out there about the “right” way to get hydrated, whether it’s needing to drink eight glasses of water a day (probably not true), drinking water instead of juice or pop (probably true) or the question of whether or not to drink water with meals (the jury’s still out on that one). But in the battle of health information, there’s one clear winner: drinking warm water is just plain better for you than drinking cold water. Recent studies on the best possible way to have your eight (or fewer) glasses of water a day have found serious plusses to drinking warm water, and downsides to taking your water chilled. Very few of us drink warm water, to begin with; unless it’s caffeinated or filled with hot chocolate powder, warm water doesn’t always appeal.Cold water slows down the digestion process, which slows down the reuptake of valuable nutrients into the bloodstream. And because cold water needs to be heated up before the body can use it, drinking cold water actually slows down the body’s rehydration process, making you thirstier than if you’d had hot water. When the body is exposed to cold temperatures, it restricts the blood vessels to avoid losing heat.When most people are suffering from dehydration, they will experience constipation, joint pain, digestive issues and many more symptoms. In fact, some people will go for days without drinking water, which is alarming because about 60% of our body is made up of it. So it’s important that you consume a sufficient amount of water to avoid dehydration. Now, there is an ongoing debate on what type of water people should be consuming. While the obvious choice for most people is cold water, there is also research that states that warm water has health benefits as well.Reasons to Drink Warm Water: Now that I have informed you of a couple of reasons to avoid drinking cold water, I’m going to give you some good reasons to drink warm water. The first reason is that it cleanses your digestion, according to Stella Metsovas, clinical nutritionist and media health expert in Food and Nutrition Sciences. Metsovas states that warm water helps break down the food in your stomach and keeps the digestive system going. She adds that people who have a glass of cold water after a meal will actually harden the consumed food which creates a fat deposit in the intestine.Alleviates Pain: According to Healthline, warm water is beneficial for cramps because it helps increase blood flow to the skin and also helps relax the cramp muscles.Stops Premature Aging: Toxins in the body have the ability to speed up the aging process. But according to Metsovas, warm water can change that. It can help repair skin cells which can increase elasticity. She adds that women will always benefit from drinking warm water because they have more hormones.
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All areas of health are interlinked

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Find your initial focus

You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.

You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.

For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances.  Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.

We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.

health areas interlinked

Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route.  You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job).   Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?

If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.

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Health Areas in Domains

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Domains

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains. 

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see

Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress

Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness

Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness

Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination

Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance

Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking

Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction

Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality

Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.

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Understand Health

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Physical, financial and mental health

One definition of health is:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. 

The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’

We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.

 It gets more complicated…

running physical health
See linkages between physical, financial and mental health

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life.  We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.  

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Health domains

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We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains.

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

wellness wheel

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.

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See which domains you should address

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Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.

The 8 are:

  • Emotional
  • Environmental
  • Financial
  • Intellectual
  • Occupational
  • Physical
  • Social
  • Spiritual

 

You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain.  You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.

Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.

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Locus of Control

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  • We want to help people in all aspects of their health  – physical, financial and mental. We also provide detailed explanations of how overall health (or well-being) is measured.
  • We believe these things are often linked, so we try and address health holistically. We are building templates, questionnaires and exercises to help you identify what’s important to you.
  • We think people should try and take responsibility for  of their own health as much as they can.  See below for what that means.

People look at things differently.  Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’.  People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control

So how do you see things?

Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.

My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.

People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older.  However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do.  This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.

locus of control

Internal

  • More likely to take responsibility for actions
  • Tend to be less influenced by others

External

  • Blame outside forces for what happens
  • Don’t believe they can change their situation themselves

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Add your attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

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Do you need to change?

No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.

At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt.  We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.

However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.

The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.

This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.

Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.  

henry ford

Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.

Consequently we need to make some changes.  The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones.  Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.

We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.

It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.

It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.

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Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

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At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.

We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.

You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.

So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness).  We do this by questionnaire.  Which one is determined by the type of person you are:

  1. You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
  2. You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
  3. You want to look at the whole situation in more detail across all the health domains.

By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.

You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas.  We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.

In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.

We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.

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Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

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We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.

The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.

The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.” 

Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.

Beliefs

These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).

Attitudes

This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).

Values

These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)

The theory

Links to Wikipedia

Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.

Beliefs

Expressions of confidence – can change over time

Attitudes

Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change

Values

Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change

Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation

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A Butterfly Life: 4 Keys to More Happiness, Better Health and Letting Your True Self Shine

Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.

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