Friday, November 15, 2013

gal-chal

I (and a few other people you may know) have embarked on a November challenge that's not about mustaches.  After reading both some suspicious but encouraging blog posts , and some I know I can do better than this guy posts on the topic, I got inspired to try it myself.  A gallon a day, for a month (November).

To be honest, I always drink a fair amount of water, so it wasn't a huge change to shoot for a gallon. At the onset, the hardest part was trying to keep track.  Fancy water is always sold in liters, but at home or at the bar, I'm more likely to have a pint, and how do pints and liters match up, and how many of those are in a gallon!?  I eventually abandoned any ideas of liters, and locked into those 8 pints a day.


See?  A whole shelf of pint glasses, ready to get filled and emptied and refilled.

Coming up on 2 weeks (I started on the Nov 3rd), and I must say: there's some pros and cons.  Well, only one con.  Bathroom trips.  All the time. The pros?

  • feeling good about my skin (this may be imaginary)
  • drinking water somehow means I'm eating a little less bad food?  I find I have this mentality that I worked so hard to get all this good (water) into my body, it'd be dumb to eat all the hoagies.*
  • going out, I'm trying to alternate drinks with pints of water.  That double results in drinking less booze (saving money/making better choices) and way better mornings, because my body is ultra hydrated all the time
  • my apartment is, at times, SUPER hot and dry, and I think having so much water in my system is helping me deal with that without having a body freakout


A few friends have jumped on this hydration-train, with various degrees of dedication. While I'm finding that I'm hitting 12(ish) pints (or 1.5gal) a day, that might not be for everyone (A: one liter is a great start, I swear). Anyway. So far? Feeling good. And now I have to go to the bathroom.

I also wrote about this experiment from a...slightly different/probably less appropriate for you angle here.




*this isn't categorically true, and I wouldn't say I've totally made a switch to a healthy diet, but I'm making better decisions sometimes.


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