Frederic Matthias Alexander, founder of the Alexander Technique – a form of body mindfulness that has one break the cycle of unnecessary muscular and mental tension leading to ill health – said of habits ‘people do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their future’.
This is particularly true when it comes to choosing habits that will help your body function optimally and better encourage longevity, and one of the most important habits you can form is to regularly visit your water cooler to ensure your body remains properly hydrated on a daily basis. While drinking coffee, tea and soft drinks through the day definitely helps; drinking water remains the healthiest way to ensure you remain adequately hydrated. To help form that habit, here are a few simple, but effective ways to keep drinking water top-of-mind.
Make a point of drinking a glass of water at regular intervals throughout your day – when you wake up, when you brush your teeth, with each meal and then again before bedtime. And if drinking water on its own doesn’t appeal to you, try adding natural flavors like sliced strawberries or lemon – even freshly chopped fruit frozen in ice cube trays and then added to your water makes for a more enticing drink.
Keep a water bottle on hand and make regular trips to your office water cooler to replenish it and try to remember to sip on the bottle throughout the work day – studies show that sipping water throughout the day is more beneficial than trying to gulp down a few glasses all in one go. And if you’re at the gym be sure to do the same and be particularly mindful of taking regular sips to replenish the water you lose while exercising.
Sometimes the best way to enforce a new habit is to schedule reminders and then track your progress, so it might be a good idea to set up regular alerts on your phone or computer to prompt you to get up and walk over to the water cooler so that you drink that next glass of water. And at the end of the day be sure to review how much water you’ve consumed so that you know what your target is for the next day.
In short, the best way to form any new healthy habit is to keep working at it, so here’s to repetition and trying to be the healthiest we can be.
