Day 50: H20

Our bodies are made up of anywhere from 55% – 70% water, depending on various factors (age, sex, etc.) With that much of your body being water, don’t you think you should drink a lot of water? Yeah, I know that you’re “supposed” to, but I honestly haven’t been drinking enough water until recently. Americans in general drink too many other things, when one of the healthiest things for us out there is the substance that compromises over half of our body. And, it’s free! Well, sort of. I mean, there is this little thing called a water bill, but it’s usually the smallest of our utilities, right? That is, unless you have a 10 acre sodded piece of land with a sprinkler system running through the whole thing.

So, here are several things I’ve learned about water recently. When doing Body For Life, you should drink 1 gallon of water per day throughout the day. That’s a lot of water! How many ounces are in a gallon? Have you ever wondered how to quickly calculate stuff like this? Just use Google Calculator. You just mosey on over to Google and type “1 gallon in ounces”.


Many folks don’t know that this functionality is built right into Google. The key word is “in”. Type the first unit, then “in”, then the second unit you want to convert to. For example, let’s say you want to know how many teaspoons are in a gallon? Everyone wants to know that, right?



Whew – now it will be easy for me to keep track of how many times I need to refill my teaspoon up during the day to ensure that I get enough water. That’s once every 75 seconds assuming 8 hours of sleep. I digress…

Another thing I recently read on the Body For Life website is that you should drink water before, during, and after your workout. They recommend 16 oz. before a workout (that’s 96 teaspoons), 4-6 oz. every 15-20 minutes during, and then more water after working out. It is important to keep your body hydrated during an intense weight training session.

One more thing about water – diet sodas. I mentioned earlier that I am trying to cut down on them and drink more water. Body for Life says that’s it’s ok to have an occasional diet soda if you want, but follow it up with an equal amount of water afterwards to make up for it. I’ve been doing this recently and have decreased the amount of diet sodas I’ve been consuming. Eventually my goal is to completely eliminate them. I know that it is healthier to just not drink them at all.

In case you’re wondering, the water image at the top I made using the free, open source tool, The Gimp and this tutorial and this video.