Watermug

Have you ever tried to drink 3 liter of water in a day? And did you succeed? If the answer is "Yes" then you must be made of sponge.

I've never really liked to drink water. Like come on - it's not sweet or anything! I hate pure water so much that a few years ago, when I started to follow a diet created by a nutrition expert, I seriously asked him, "Can I add 50% of fruit juice to my water?". Seems quite ridiculous now. Back then, when I was seriously thirsty on a hot summer noon and I took a glass of water, I was only able to drink half of it at most. Plain water just tasted absolutely disgusting. It is supposed to have no taste but I just couldn't drink it.

Just as a dietary goal I started to force myself to drink water. After a while I had a breakthrough. I was thirsty all the time. I had a bottle of water beside me during lectures because otherwise my throat would get so dry I couldn't concentrate anymore. Actually I never was good at concentrating. I have to write down random phrases from the lecture just to keep myself from thinking, "I wonder why blackboards are green. Why do they call them blackboards anyway? When I had to wash the blackboard in school it never was as clean as this one. I wonder how they cleaned it...". Once I manage to pull myself away from ten ways to clean a blackboard, I suddenly realize I've missed much of the lecture. But without my water I was only able to think about how horribly thirsty I felt. Mhh, if you're reading this blog then you already know that my mind has a tendency to get side-tracked ever so often.

I still don't like water, I just need to drink it. When I don't force myself I only drink about a liter of water each day. That would be a nice amount if I wasn't breastfeeding but now I'm supposed to drink 3 liters of water daily. Even after years or training myself to drink water three liters is still an enormous amount of water. For a while I wrote down how much water I've drank just to remind myself to drink very often. Usually I had about 1.5 liters and then I goggled down another half a liter just before I went to bed. Drinking before bedtime - ingenious, isn't it?

I think I've managed to drink 3 liters only once or twice in the last few months. I truly felt like a water balloon. I hadn't realized 3 liters is such a big amount. When you're thirsty you probably drink about half a glass of water like most people just to wet your mouth. Imagine doing that 30 times each day! 3 liters is 15 glasses of water. That's one glass for every hour spent awake. When I started I thought it only takes a few seconds to drink that glass of water and there are sooooooo many seconds in each hour. It can't be too hard to drink enough water. And still I often realize in the afternoon that I've drank less than half a liter of water. It just takes so much effort to fill my glass so often during the day.

Okey, truthfully, it doesn't HAVE TO be water. I like drinking root beer, so perhaps I could just drink that in stead. 100g of root beer has 30 calories, which means 3 liters of root beer has 900 kcal, which is almost half of my daily recommended calorie intake. I'd rather drink water and eat that much chocolate.

Now I have a new confidence that I will be able to drink more water. Today I bought new 500ml beer mugs with a measure mark. It's brilliant. I just have to drink 2 mugs of water every morning, afternoon and evening. How hard can it be, right?