Water Works: Easy Hacks to Stay Hydrated and Feel Better
We all deserve to live our best lives. Yet the daily hustle can often distract us from making wellness a priority and giving ourselves time to offload some stress. Fortunately, the best and most meaningful healthy habit is also the easiest one to adopt!
Keeping up with proper hydration does far more for our physical, mental, and emotional wellness than most people realize. Once you figure out how to drink more water (and actually enjoy drinking water!) everything else can naturally fall into place.
How to Drink More Water
A lot of people are confused about how to drink more water during the colder months. It’s one thing when we’re sweating outside during the summer, because drinking water is arguably the best way to cool down. We want to feel cozy in winter. So what’s the solution? Just make a cup of tea! It’s a great, zero-calorie way to warm up.
Another hack to drink more water is to play around with making infused water. Slicing up some fruits and veggies can add a ton of flavor, and it’s also super simple to do. You can use just about anything to make infused water, from the classic lemon and cucumber combo, to strawberries and mint, a cinnamon stick with apples, or even a chopped-up jalapeno.
That being said, even infused water can be unattractive when it’s made with unfiltered water, so don’t settle for tap water. You need to start with water that’s clean in order to absorb all of the good flavors. The same goes for making good coffee and tea too.
Get Motivated About Staying Hydrated
You already have wellness on your mind. But if you need even more ideas for how to drink more water, try to remember the reasons why you want to drink more water in the first place. The health benefits are incredibly varied, and they touch just about every aspect of having a good day, every day!
1. Hydration can help you reach your weight loss goals
There’s a clear connection between drinking more water and healthy weight loss plans. When we sit down for a meal, consciously sipping more water between bites can help us feel fuller, faster. And when we already feel full, it’s only natural to not eat as much.
It’s even better to drink a large glass of water before you even start eating. Sometimes our body can’t really tell the difference between hunger and dehydration. It never hurts to drink a glass of water and wait ten minutes before you grab a snack.
2. You’ll have more energy—and sleep better too
The Sleep Foundation continues to share reports that drinking more water can help you get a good night’s rest and feel more restored throughout the day. People who say that they feel “extremely tired, lethargic, or fatigued” are repeatedly shown to be suffering from excessive dehydration. To make matters worse, people who only get six hours of sleep per night are consistently found to have significantly higher rates of dehydration. It’s a vicious cycle.
That’s why we need to be sipping water throughout the day. When you’re hydrated, you’ll also be sleeping better. And when you sleep better, your body can do a better job of staying hydrated. All it takes is a little water.
3. Drinking water can boost your focus and productivity
Letting our body’s water content drop even just one percent below the ideal rate can hamper our brain function and interfere with our memory and focus. This can obviously lead to other concerns for our kiddos at school. It can also affect our work days, and how we feel at the end of the day. We all want to feel like we’ve accomplished something. But if the tasks just seem to drag on because our focus is lost, that can only add to our stress levels.
Consequently, employers should be motivated to help their team members stay hydrated by providing clean, filtered water to their workplace. The right setup with point-of-use filtration is affordable, and it’s a great way to boost morale. Water that tastes crummy ruins any types of good coffee or tea. Adding a water filtration solution can be the perfect match for that new coffee maker in the break room.
4. Your entire body depends on water
Water is the building block of life. So in addition to cognitive focus, the body’s water content level has direct ties to every part of our physical well-being.
Obviously water is responsible for flushing out waste and toxins. But it’s easy to forget that it’s also what helps deliver nutrients throughout the body. Proper hydration can lower our blood pressure, and it’s also the critical component of improving our joint and muscle health.
Plus, drinking more water helps keep our skin soft and our complexion clear. Hydration is also crucial for hair health. You don’t necessarily need to pay for extra-fancy products. Staying hydrated might be the missing link to getting the results you want from your beauty routine.
5. Staying hydrated is great for mood regulation
There’s no way to put a price on how hydration can improve our quality of life. From weight loss to enhanced productivity, restful nights and fewer aches and pains, there’s also new research to show that drinking water can support our mental health. Our brain’s mood-boosting hormones, such as serotonin, can be adversely affected by dehydration. Drinking more water can help regulate that production. If you find yourself stressed and irritable, take a few minutes to yourself with a glass of water, tea, or a new infused water recipe.
It’s important to realize that when we’re noticeably thirsty, the effects of dehydration have already run their course. Feeling thirsty just means that those negative impacts have been kicked into high gear. Getting ahead of the ball and avoiding dehydration altogether can let us enjoy a whole slew of perks. This is just a short list of the benefits of staying hydrated. There are plenty more!