Sunday, November 14, 2010

Drinking Lots of Water

Last week, I said I wanted to try to drink 48 ounces of water a day.

I thought I had found a cool tool on igoogle to track my water consumption, called Water Tracker.  This is what it looks like:


It seemed like it would be pretty cool.  It starts with 8 full glasses, and as you drink 8 ounces of water, you click on a glass to make it empty.   You are only able to do 8 ounces at a time (no half glasses).  It keeps track of the number of days you've been tracking your water.  Completed days are the days that you reached 64 oz.  Percentage is number of completed days over total days.  If you don't make it to 64 oz, it doesn't count.  It is good for keeping track of your daily water, but if you want to see that 2 days ago you only drank, say, 48 ounces - it won't do that for you.

Another way to keep track of your water is on The Daily Plate (now owned by Live Strong) - a free website (you can pay for a gold membership with added features).  I have only used the free site; it does require you to create an account with a log-in and password.

The page is kind of long so I broke it into two images.  Here's the top half of my page as of Thursday evening (before dinner)-


And here's the bottom half of the page, including the "Daily Water Consumption" over to the right.  You click on "Add A Glass" and it adds 8 ounces to your daily total.  This page will remember how much water you had, because it saves whatever you enter (i.e. a year later, I could come back to November 11, 2010 and see this).  It will provide you with weekly totals for food, but not water.


I don't use The Daily Plate daily, but I will enter what I eat for a couple days every few weeks to see if I have any glaring gaps in my diet, to see if I am eating enough protein, or if I'm eating too much of something bad.

Now to check in with how I've been with my water over the past week.  Here's a little graph. Check out my sweet Excel skills on Windows Live SkyDrive.  If I had actually paid for Microsoft Office on my mini laptop, I could wow you with more accurate Y-axis labeling.

Clearly, I've got plenty of room for improvement still!  This is strictly water; things like coconut water, milk, orange juice, etc. were not factored in.

Do you have any experience with the programs mentioned above?  
Or know of any others that are better?

PS- If you'd like a chance to win an Enell sports bra, check out the giveaway on Kim's blog, (Just) Trying is for Little Girls.  Here's a link to the giveaway post.

8 comments:

  1. Hi fellow running woman! I am training for a half marathon, and your 5 mile speed run looks interesting. I am wondering what kind of watch you use to help you with pacing. That would be hard for me to do, because I don't have any kind of watch.. just a Nike+ that's pretty inaccurate.

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  2. I shouldn't be surprised, but I had no idea there were tools for keeping track of water consumption! I just fill up my two water bottles each morning and make sure to drink all of the water from them by the end of the day. Any time I get a new water bottle, I find myself drinking more!

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  3. That's a pretty cute tool! I drink probably way more water than I need to but for someone that wants to work on drinking more water it would be a great tool.

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  4. Anon- Thanks for stopping by! I have a Garmin Forerunner 405CX. I was lucky to receive it as a gift early on in my running, before I got into intervals/speedwork, so I never did intervals without it. If you have access to a track and a stopwatch, that can make the math a little easier- or use www.gmap-pedometer.com to plot out a route before you head out the door to know where your mile markers are. When is your half marathon? Good luck with your training!

    Michelle- I'd bring two bottles with me, but I feel like I already bring so much stuff to work (my coffee mug, my giant water bottle, my lunch, my regular bag). Going to have to get a bigger bag! :) While I like my newer (spring) Camelbak insulated water bottle for keeping my water cold - I liked my little nalgene since it had the ounces marked on the outside.

    Heather- Thanks for commenting! I didn't have a problem drinking lots of water in the summer when it was hot, but now I'm not so much. You'd think with the air being more dry I'd be thirsty too. Who knows. That little Water Tracker tool also has the option once you add it to your igoogle to edit/choose a different number of cups of water (8-15). I can't imagine drinking 15 cups of water a day though! I'd be going to the bathroom non stop.

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  5. I've used the water tracker on daily plate before. Then I felt silly that I was tracking my water. Hahaha. But it's great to drink water!! I drink more than 100 oz a day, with most of it before 4 pm. I find it easier to drink more water earlier in the day for some reason. I think a good way to keep track of water is just to have a designated water bottle and keep track of how many times you fill it up. Like for example, if my water bottle is a 20 oz, then I make sure I fill it up at least 5 times a day and drink it all. It becomes routine after a while. Every morning before I leave the house I fill up my 24 oz bottle, and finish it during my commute to work. Then I have a 40 oz bottle at work that I make sure I drink 2 full bottles out of (or close to that). And I always drink at least my 24 oz bottle every time I work out. So that's how I get enough water and how I keep track... good luck! You will be peeing a lot more. =)

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  6. M.S.E.- You're good! 100 ounces!? I need to be better about spacing it throughout the day. I get to the late afternoon and realize I should have had more and scramble to drink more. I should try to finish the first bottle by noon and finish the refill by the time I leave work.

    Peeing more is just what I need...haha. One of my supervisors at work has her office right across from the bathroom and claims she keeps an eye on who is using the bathroom frequently, to determine who she thinks might be pregnant!

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  7. Yep, 100 oz sounds like a lot but it really isn't. Hahaha... it's only about 3 liters! =) Like I said earlier, I drink about 24 oz on the way to work. Then I fill up my 40 oz bottle at work which I finish around 11-12. And I fill it up again and finish most of it by the time I leave work. Then I drink another 20 oz or so when I get home. So I think it definitely helps to break it out and give yourself these deadlines. After a while you will be so used to it that you won't even think about it! Definitely stop drinking later on in the day because you don't want to get up multiple times throughout the night to pee!

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  8. Good news! My mini-deadlines of noon and the end of my work day worked well yesterday! Then I had more when I got home. I think I'll keep that up.

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