30 day challenge: Drink a gallon of water a day

Posted by Jacob Allred on Jan 7, 2015 in 30 Day Challenge | 0 comments

My sister shared an article on Facebook about a month ago: This Woman Drinks a Gallon of Water Daily for 30 Days. See What Happens! I think this person’s before and after has more to do with lighting and Photoshop, but my wife and I decided we needed to drink more water anyway so what the heck, we’d give it a try.

The first week was miserable. I had to pee. All. The. Time. It was hard to remember to drink water. And I was still thirsty all the time. If anything, I was more thirsty. It was a bit strange.

But after the first week, things changed a bit. I started to notice the benefits, and I didn’t have to pee so much (or maybe I did and just got used to it?). I also wasn’t thirsty all the time. Drinking water was becoming a habit.

Here are some of the benefits I noticed:

1. I started sleeping better. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to go nearly every morning. It was an awesome and very welcome change.
2. My blepharitis cleared up. This is a frustrating condition that causes inflamed, irritated, itchy eyes and eyelids. I had to have surgery on one of my eyelids because of this awhile back, so this is a huge deal to me. It isn’t completely gone, but it is vastly improved.
3. The dark circles under my eyes are lighter. They aren’t completely gone, but I no longer look like I got punched in the face.
4. My lips aren’t as chapped. Again, not a perfect remedy but much improved. I’ve been a chronic ChapStick/Vaseline user for years.
5. My allergies aren’t as bad. My wife is using more Kleenex than I am, which I don’t think has ever happened before.

I found a free app called Water Your Body that has been helpful. It isn’t a great app, but it was the first I tried and works well enough. It makes it easy to track my water intake throughout the day, and lets me know if I am ahead or behind schedule.

My wife gave up partway through the challenge (although she is still drinking more water than she was before we started) but I plan on continuing to drink a gallon a day.