Summer is all about having fun and enjoying the outdoors, whether you’re at the pool, resting on the beach, hiking in the mountains, or simply sitting on the back patio on a warm summer evening.
But, as we all know, summer is also pretty hot! We need to stay cool and we need to stay hydrated.
Obviously, this should be easy. You need to get a Kool8 water bottle. Fill it. Drink it regularly.
Check it out now. It comes in multiple colors, it has a durable, stainless steel material. It’s got a sleek, modern design.
It’s eco-friendly and ethical. It has a tea infuser. It’s completely insulated so your drinks stay hot or cold. It’s perfect.
But as many of us know, it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge to get the recommended amounts of water per day.
You might need a bit more support than just the water bottle.
Here are 20 ways to make it just a little bit easier to get your fill of hydration throughout the day.
Eat more fruit!
Certain fruits are made up with up to 92% water.
Not only can you kick a little sweet tooth craving by indulging in a bit more fruit, but you can also increase your hydration with it.
According to sources, Watermelons are 92% water, cantaloupes and grapefruits are 90% water, raspberries, peaches, plums, cranberries, and oranges are about 86% water.
Even bananas are pretty high, with 74% water.
Grabbing a water-filled piece of fruit to snack on instead of a dry granola bar can make a world of difference.
Drink a glass before each meal.
The benefits of this one are two-fold. It’s often stated that drinking an 8-ounce glass of water before breakfast, lunch and dinner is great for the body.
Not only does it help you accomplish your water-drinking goals, but plenty of articles and studies have gone into detail on how drinking water before we eat helps us to avoid overeating.
Your stomach tends to take a bit of time to recognize when you’re no longer hungry, so drinking water before you eat helps to establish that in a more-timely manner.
Visit an IV therapy center.
I get it, this one might sound a little bit pretentious and expensive, so it’s not for everyone.
Although many people tend to think of IV therapy as a quick-solution to hangovers, they’re actually becoming more and more popular among the health and fitness oriented.
They’re a great solution to an influx of hydration and nutrients. They’re even becoming a method of treatment for certain medical conditions.
Drink soda water with every two drinks on a night out.
It’s summer.
We all like to indulge a little bit.
If you do happen to be going on and partaking in some adult beverages, don’t let it set you off on the wrong foot with your hydration efforts.
Make a pact to yourself that for every two drinks you have, whether beer, wine, or mixed, your third drink is simply a soda water.
Why a soda water? Soda water is an easy mix at the bar, can be easier to quickly drink than simply a cup of ice water, and looks conveniently enough like a vodka-soda that no one will know to give you a hard time!
Plus, your not-hungover body will appreciate it in the morning.
Set a timer for every hour or two to remind you to grab a glass.
Sometimes our lack of drinking simply comes from the fact that we don’t remember to drink water.
This can be handled in one of two ways.
You can simply set timers on your phone to alert you every hour or two to drink some water.
You can also use a hydration app set to remind you at certain times to drink and to help you monitor your daily intake.
Set daily water drinking goals to give you something to aim for.
It’s no secret that setting goals is one of the more effective ways to actually accomplish what we want to accomplish.
When we have something to aim for, it becomes more concrete and realistic.
A lot of the hydration apps out there allow individuals to set drinking goals based on height, weight, activity levels, and other factors.
Keep electrolytes gummies in your purse, pocket, or backpack.
Staying hydrated, especially for those who are active or athletic, is about more than just water.
Electrolytes help keep the body hydrated and balanced when we sweat, exercise, and workout.
Electrolytes help replenish our system and allow our body to utilize water more efficiently.
Unfortunately, many electrolyte-based sports beverages also contain a lot of sugar.
Keeping the gummy chews in a sports bag for the gym helps your body with more than just hydration.
Avoid sugary drinks and enjoy caffeine in moderation.
Sugar-heavy beverages as well as caffeinated drinks often act as diuretics.
Diuretics are substances that increase the need or urge to urinate, and that means losing water at excessively high amounts.
High-sugar beverages are a large culprit here, and while coffee and tea are diuretics, studies have shown that enjoying them in moderation doesn’t impact hydration quite as much.
Drink more fruit-infused water.
Sometimes it’s simply hard to drink water because it has no taste or flavor or texture.
We get bored with it and want to drink something with a little more punch.
Chop up some cucumber, strawberry, and lemon, (or whatever fruits you have ready to go) and pop them into a convenient infuser-pitcher.
Fill your water bottle with it or enjoy a glass every now and then to have a slightly sweeter and more flavorful sip of hydration.
Carry flavored water packets to amp up your water intake.
There are quite a few different brands, styles, and flavors of packets that you can easily add to an 8 or 16-ounce cup of water.
Some add vitamin C to your day, other’s simply add low-calorie flavor, others add a bit of fizz and a touch of caffeine.
The flavors (as long as they aren’t adding too much sugar) can help you be more interested in the beverage itself, and thus, allow you to drink more water throughout your day.
Make your own popsicles
Summer is already hot enough as it is! Help yourself cool down as well as pick up on some water intake with at-home popsicles.
Using popsicle molds that you can make and freeze yourself, you can also give yourself a bit of a nutritional kick.
You can blend fruits together and freeze a smoothie mix of strawberries and watermelon, you can freeze small amounts of electrolyte beverages, or you can look up one of a number of recipes and find the right one for you.
Drink aloe water.
Aloe water isn’t always the easiest to find, but it seems to have less controversial results than coconut water does.
Aloe, the same hydrating plant we use to soothe our sunburnt skin, has an incredible amount of positive qualities when consumed as a water drink.
From its alkaline ph, to its detoxifying abilities, to its digestive benefits, it’s more than just the hydration you’ll take away from it.
It has an earthy flavor and is best when enjoyed chilled, so find a bottle or two and cool off. It’s also purported to have incredible benefits on the skin!
Sip your water or use straws instead of gulping.
Water is easier to enjoy long-term when we aren’t gulping it down to meet our daily water quota.
Some studies show that when we gulp water down or chug a glass, it moves through our system faster, less efficiently, and makes us need to urinate more frequently.
When you sip water over a period of time rather than chugging it down in huge gulps and finishing a glass in a few minutes, your body is able to process the water and absorb it into your body faster.
Pick yourself up a small, collapsible straw so that you can whip it out and enjoy water at your leisure.
- Add ice to smoothies instead of using frozen berries.
When we want to enjoy a smoothie, we often use frozen berries to get that delicious, frosty texture. However, using fresh fruit and vegetables in your smoothies means you’re getting more of the nutrients. Blend your fresh berries with ice cubes and some almond milk to keep it chilled but give yourself a bit more water in the mix as well.
Monitor your bathroom use.
This might be a little bit TMI, but it’s pretty easy to tell whether you’re dehydrated or not by how often you go to the bathroom.
If you find yourself only going once or twice throughout the day, it likely means you simply aren’t drinking enough water and your body is trying to hold in more of the H2O it already has.
The more water you drink, the more frequently you’ll make it to the restroom, and the better your body becomes at flushing out all the toxins it’s trying to get rid of.
Mark down on a notepad or on your phone when you go to the restroom and start looking for habits or patterns that might suggest you need to get a bit more water.
Document how you feel when you do and when you don’t get enough water.
This is more of a short term practice, but spend a week or two jotting down how you feel on the days you do drink more water, and on the days you don’t.
You’ll distinctly notice you have more energy, feel less lethargic, feel more alert, more willing to work out, etc., on the days you drink water, and feel tired, weary, and foggy on the days you’re dehydrated.
Remind yourself how much better you work and live when you get plenty of hydration.
Use a hydrating lotion on your skin and face.
Putting lotion on your skin is by no means comparable to drinking more water and getting enough hydration.
You can’t simply put lotion on and feel like you’re no longer dehydrated.
But, when you feel good and hydrated on the outside as well as the inside, you’ll feel the benefits are more in your favor.
If your skin feels dry and stretched, drink some water, use some lotion, and remember that water is key.
Swap the afternoon coffee for a cup of iced tea.
We already talked about how coffee and caffeinated beverages are a diuretic, which you don’t want if you’re trying to get hydrated.
Drinking a tea that doesn’t have caffeine, or even drinking teas that have low amounts of caffeine, are also (obviously) made with water.
Instead of having a coffee or soda, enjoy a hot or iced tea for an extra cup of water. Keep it low sugar and low other additives, but remember too that different teas can help with digestion, memory, sleep, and a multitude of other factors.
Drink pressed celery juice.
Celery juice is a little bit of a fad right now, but for good reasons.
Celery is an upwards of 90% water (even up to 95%).
So, a cup of celery juice is basically a cup of water, plus some nutrients and fibers. Pressed celery juice, which is pretty easy to make yourself, is just a cup of juice made from celery using a pressed juice machine.
Celery has a number of benefits, and while this juice shouldn’t act as a meal replacement entirely, it’s great to supplement a healthy breakfast to start your day off right.
Read about how good drinking water is for your body.
Sometimes we just need to remember how good things are for us. Water is really a miracle elixir. It helps improve your skin.
It helps improve your focus. It’s good for your liver and other organs. It helps digestion. It helps with weight loss.
It improves your metabolism. It helps your brain function better and more efficiently. It makes you feel more alert and more awake.
It helps with body temperature and blood pressure. It helps prevent certain illnesses or infections. We could list them forever.
Water is pretty incredible, and the best part is, it’s one of the few habits you can change that actually has a really quick turn-around for when you start seeing changes. It’s inexpensive, but the benefits are invaluable.
Pick a few, pick one, or pick a bunch of the above approaches to increasing your daily water intake and watch how quickly your body thanks you for it.