In case you missed my first post about this topic, I made a new year’s resolution for the month of January to drink more water. Before the new year I was drinking somewhere between 8-24oz of water a day (which is basically nothing) and for one month I made myself drink 96oz everyday. 96oz isn’t even that extraordinarily high, but believe me it required all the will power I had to drink that much in a day.
Since the month of January is over I thought I’d update you guys on what I noticed in the 31 days I drank more water.
On the first day of this resolution I downloaded the My Water app. It’s a water intake tracker that I used religiously. There’s no way I would have been able to keep track of my water intake without it! You can make a goal and then set up reminders to go off as frequently as you’d like to keep you on track throughout the day. PS it’s free so why not try it, right?!
WEEK 1
Right off the bat I noticed one obvious change – I peed a lot more! Not that you need to know this info, but technically this is a post about all the health changes I noticed so I guess I’ll be filling you in on my bathroom schedule. 🙂 In the first week I went to the bathroom around 7-9 times a day. After a while I stopped counting but it was significantly more often than I used to go.
As far as spreading out my water intake throughout the day, I struggled a lot with this from day 1. I typically drank the majority of the 96oz between 6pm-12am which is not ideal. Speaking of not ideal – I felt extremely bloated as soon as I started this resolution. I mean my body was used to 12oz a day so it’s no shock that my body wasn’t sure what to do with all the extra water. Plus it didn’t help that I drank most of the water within a 6 hour period.
The main thing I was paying close attention to in this month long experiment were my headaches. I suffer from frequent headaches and I was hoping that increasing the amount of water I drank in a day would help this issue. The first week I noticed I had two mild headaches. I was slightly disappointed by this but I was hopeful that it was still just early and that drinking water would help down the road more.
WEEK 2
During week two I did a much better job of spreading out the water I drank throughout the day. I still drank about half of my goal in the evening but this slight adjustment significantly helped me feel less bloated. I also noticed that my hunger decreased slightly. I love a good evening snack but since I was super focused on meeting my goal in the evening, I found myself with my water bottle in hand rather than a snack. I often felt plenty full from the water that I didn’t even crave an evening snack.
As far as headaches, I still had two mild headaches in week two but I also noticed that they were mild enough that I didn’t feel the need to take ibuprofen. Normally I need ibuprofen the second I sense a headache coming on because they get out of hand quickly. So as of week 2, increasing my water hasn’t diminished the number of times I get a headache in a week but it has definitely helped tame down the intensity of my headaches. I’ll take that!
WEEK 3
I almost never felt bloated anymore in week 3 which meant my body must have gotten used to the new level of water I drank everyday! I was very happy to not feel weighted down anymore! I also noticed that I didn’t pee as frequently as I did in the beginning of the month. Not sure if that’s because my body started getting used to it or what but I was happy to reduce my bathroom visits.
I only had one super mild migraine that almost went away on it’s own but ibuprofen helped do the job. A mild migraine is a rarity for me…normally they knock me out and ibuprofen does nothing to help so as odd as this sounds, I was happy to deal with a mild migraine. And I was SUPER happy that ibuprofen stopped my migraine quickly.
WEEK 4
My final week was a continuation of the positive changes I noticed in week 2 and 3. I had very few snacks in the evening because the water kept me plenty full and my headaches were mild enough to go away on their own.
If I’m being totally honest, in the moment it never felt like anything significant was changing in my body. But over time, (and with the help of a daily log) I can see how increasing the amount of water I drank every day affected me.
My main goal with this experiment was to decrease the number of headaches I got and to see how my body reacted to a balanced amount of water every day. While I still get a few headaches every week, they’re significantly more mild than they usually are which I consider a win! (Who knows, maybe as I continue drinking more water I’ll notice a decrease in headaches eventually) My appetite has decreased slightly and I’m replacing snack food with something my body needs more – water!
All in all, I’m happy with the changes I noticed (even if they weren’t as dramatic as I was initially hoping for). The changes I have noticed are most definitely enough to motivate me to continue drinking more water and I look forward to seeing if any additional health benefits pop up down the road!
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You should definitely check out Dr. Brooke Goldner’s protocol. That’s what I plan to do. Part of it is drinking a minimum of 96 ounces of water daily which is how I found your blog. I wanted to see how others were drinking that much water 😅. It’s been a few years since this post. Have you kept up with your water intake?
I keep water by my bed and the first thing I do when I wake is guzzle a bunch of it to get a jump on a hydrated day without too much thought.
Smart! You have more discipline than I do! 🙂