New Year's Resolution: Drink more WATER!

I've been thinking a lot lately about the importance of living a more healthy lifestyle.

Drinking enough water is a crucial element of that and affects so many aspects of our health. 

And with the new year, this would be a perfect New Year's Resolution for 2014!

The other day, I found an AWESOME idea on this blog: Undressed Skeleton; an idea that is so simple and so helpful in remembering to drink enough water throughout the day! 

I made mine a little bit differently, but the credit goes Undressed Skeleton for such a great idea. This is a helpful tool for adults, but also could be a fun way to help children drink enough water too!

Adults need  8 cups of fluids/ day.

Children need  5-8 cups of fluids/ day, depending on age.

Here's what you do:

• For adults, get four 16oz clear, plastic water bottles (or some other combination of sizes to equal 64 total ounces--which is 8 cups). 
• With a permanent marker, draw a line around the water bottle in 8oz (1 cup) increments. 
• Write times of the day above each line and on the bottom of each bottle showing at what time each cup of water needs to be drunk by.
• For example: mine is marked every 2 hours. One cup of water every 2 hours isn't bad at all!

• To make it easier to tell the order of the water bottles, write numbers 1-4 on the lids. 
• Place the water bottles in the fridge to keep them nice and cold. When you wake up in the morning get out the first one out and drink all the water in the allotted time. Then go get #2, then #3, etc.
• At the end of the day, rinse/wash them, fill them back up and place them in the fridge.

I made the bottles shown above for myself and have been trying it out for the past few days. So far it's been VERY helpful for me! I think one of the best things about it is that it keeps me at a good level of hydration ALL throughout the day, instead of being dehydrated for half the day and then chugging a bunch of water when I'm really thirsty. 

I would definitely recommend this to anyone wanting an easy way to remind yourself to drink more water! 

And if you do this for your kids, you could even have a sticker or little prize at the end of the day if they drink all their water. :)