Working with clients on their wellness or weight loss journey, one of the recurring challenges is drinking enough water. Just simple clean still water. It’s not that’s it hard to get, particularly if you live in Scotland where we have a weather system to keep replenishing our reserves. It’s not only available from your kitchen tap, but also “free” if you put the Council Tax charges to one side.
So where’s the problem?
The thing is we have become used to drinking things that are produced to taste different to water, generally through flavouring, sweetening and colouring, and adding some fizz. And we are happy to pay for the pleasure, which is some part is the outcome of saturation marketing (see what I did there?). So through marketing and flavouring we’ve created habits that have us telling ourselves that we don’t like water. Thousands of years of evolution and in the last handful of decades we have decided we don’t like water, so now most of us drink little, or not enough, fresh water.
I don’t like water!
It’s all very well to tell ourselves we don’t like water, but our bodies aren’t impressed with that at all. Hydrating ourselves properly, with water, brings us benefits in wellbeing in the areas of skin, hair, brain function, circulation and crucially digestive function and elimination! In terms of weight loss, almost counterintuitively, drinking more water results in less bloating and helps in the release of body fat. And the increased frequency of toilet trips is a short-term rebalancing which settles down in a day or two.
How can I change this?
Changing things is probably simpler than first thought. A couple of key changes to make:
- Lose the fizzy drinks and sugary drinks
- Add healthier drinks in place, ideally plain water
- Track your water intake and aim for 8 glasses a day (2 litres)
The benefits you get as these changes take effect are huge, and worth sticking to it when it seems hard in the beginning. Have faith that the day will come when you wonder what all the fuss was about!
If you’d like to know how we can help you to overcome the challenges and get to that happy place just get in touch.