Waterlogged

I am constantly on a mission to drink more water. I tend to go in waves- I’ll be really good about it for a few days, and then just start slacking. When I was a teacher, drinking more water during the day was a constant challenge, because I rarely had the opportunity to go use the restroom! Now that I’m pretty much on my own schedule, that restriction doesn’t really apply.

When I saw my friend Dani posting photos on Instagram of an app called Waterlogged, I became intrigued. Dani had challenged herself to drink 100 oz. of water a day, and was consistently meeting that goal! Since I need to be more diligent about drinking enough (more!) water each day, I thought I’d give it a shot. I downloaded the app almost two weeks ago, and have been tracking my water intake every single day- and I love it!

Since I’m such a big fan of this app, I thought I’d give you a little preview of how it works. It’s really simple! After you download the app, you can set your daily water intake goal.

If you click on the option for “Water Recommendations,” it will link to a document that explains how much water you should drink according to the Institute of Medicine’s new recommendations. It’s based mostly on age and gender. To be honest, I didn’t really look over that document to set my goal- I just kind of picked a number. I’ve heard that it’s good to shoot for 1/2 of your weight (in ounces), so 100 oz for me is quite a bit more than I really “need.” Since I sweat a lot when I teach classes/exercise, I figured I should increase the amount anyway. You can Google “water intake recommendations” and find a plethora of information, or check out the advice from the Mayo Clinic here.

When you reach your goal, you get a little message telling you how awesome you are. In the last two weeks, I’ve only met the 100 oz. goal three times.

Most days I’m around 80 oz. I drink a lot in the morning, because of exercise/teaching classes early in the day. This screen shot was around 10:00 am yesterday:

When I track my water intake, I’m only including pure water. I almost always have a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of tea at night, and am not counting those. The only other beverage I regularly drink is almond milk, which is also not tracked.

I’m going to actually decrease my goal to around 80 oz a day, which is a lot more doable. Like I said- choosing 100 oz. was just a random challenge, and it’s just a bit much for me. (Also- to be a little personal- I have to pee WAY too often on the days when I meet 100 oz.!)

So, now that you know more about my water drinking habits and bladder than you needed to, I’ll explain a bit more about how the app works. As you can see on the picture above, there’s a little button that says “Record Drink.” Each time you want to track your water, you click that and it takes you here:

You can take a photo of the vessel you drank from (and record it’s volume) and how much of that glass you drank. It will store your photos, so that you can select from the glasses/bottles/cups/mugs that you use most often. These are mine:

There’s that Colorado mug.

You can also just type in the volume itself, without selecting a photo.

You can also share your water intake on Facebook, if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you go back to the main screen, you can click on the glass and it will show you everything you have recorded for the day. You can also delete any items that may have been tracked in error. If you have the location settings on, it will also record where you were when that drink was tracked. I guess that might be helpful someday?

There are a few other features and options if you purchase the full version, but I’m sticking with the free one for now. It suits me just fine.

So, there you have it. Waterlogged. I love it! If you’re looking for a good method of accountability to drink more water, this would be it!

Do you drink enough water during the day?