Things of Which I Don't Get Enough (A Series)

First in a series of things that I don't get enough of.

Water.

I just don't get enough of this. I suck at it. It's just not that hard. Drink 8 cups of water a day for a regular person, and for an active person, drink twice that. This means I should drink at least 4 of my water bottles full each day, to get 96 ounces. I should really add one more water bottle since I'm riding my bike 18 miles roundtrip to work most days. If I'm lucky, I get 2.5 bottles down. One during my work out and another 1.5 through the day. I often end up having to stock up in the evening because I've not drunk hardly any all day. (And that, to say the least, does NOT help with my small-bladder-pee-at-least-once-a-night-in-the-best-of-times problem.)

If I manage to keep Crystal Light individual packets around, that definitely helps. Any kind of flavored water goes down easier than regular boring water. I buy them often, but they are expensive! I don't use a whole one in a bottle of water so they last longer, but still.

If I drink room temperature water, that helps too. Very cold water does not work for me. And ice? Forget it. Too annoying on my mouth, my teeth, and rumor has it that your body has to exert energy to warm the water up in order to hydrate from it. And then, I just proved that rumor untrue by finding this: "Cold (40 - 50 degrees F) water is absorbed more quickly from the stomach. Also, if cold water is drank during physical exercise has the dual effect of also cooling the internal body temperature along with sweat produced by exercise. Since sweat is your body's way of cooling itself, leave sweat on your skin and you should feel cooler." And so.

Now, my family will tell you that I've been dehydrated from childhood. I figured this out a few years back and have been giving my mother hell about it ever since. We were given juice and milk. And when we played outside in the snow for a long time, hot chocolate. My dad mowed the lawn all afternoon and then drank a beer (a Bud Light, usually, so yeah, but still). My mom had a half a glass of soda for dinner and didn't even finish it. I think in the 70s, they didn't know the human body needed water, or something. I have no other explanation since my parents are super responsible in every other way - feeding us correctly, breast feeding us when it wasn't en vogue, keeping us safe from the cars in the street, making us bundle up, knowing where we were when we went out even in high school. My mother once said "What? My pee is always almost orange." This from a woman with a master's degree.

I had horrible headaches and backaches all through middle and high school. I was ferried off to every doctor under the sun. Although not sedentary, I wasn't an athlete, and there was no real explanation. "Stress" was the final word. I don't remember any doctor asking about liquid intake. I seriously believe I was severely dehydrated all those years. I have not had headaches with any regularity in my adult life, since I started being responsible for my own hydration.

This is a struggle though, I think for many people. I'm pretty sure that most people don't get enough water. I read an article recently about how it's a myth that coffee or soda is actually working against hydration. The author was positing that any liquid is better than none. However, I just found this statement: "The drinks you mention — beer, coffee, and cola — are all water based. Even though they contain carbonation and caffeine, they are still a form of fluid. So if you were stuck in the middle of a desert, you would probably last longer drinking coffee and/or cola than you would if you drank nothing."

The next time I'm stuck in a desert, I'll have all the coffee and soda I want. Until then, I'm going to work harder at drinking more water every day.