No more excuses - An easy way to remember to drink water

10/03/2015 Sidrah Ahmad

We all know the great benefits of water, in fact – we recently posted about how water can give you an inner boost, but the trick is to actually remember to drink your recommended water intake.

Water is one of the most beneficial things to incorporate into your everyday and is often the most forgotten which can cause dehydration. Dehydration causes headaches, dry skin, fatigue, and much more. Prolonged dehydration is even more severe and potentially causes hypotension, dizziness, insomnia, and much worse (if left untreated for too long). Lucky for you there are ways to set reminders to drink water and avoid the nasty effects of dehydration.

IFTTT (If This Then That) is a service that connects with other web and mobile services to automatically perform an action when another is executed – they call these strings “recipes.” For example, you can make a recipe that emails/texts you anytime you’re tagged in a Facebook photo (so you can promptly untag yourself if necessary).

See where we’re going with this? Below you can find 5 IFTTT recipes that serve as a reminder to drink more water throughout your day.

Drink Water Reminder: When Out on the Town

Out for a happy hour, work dinner or celebrating a special event? Remind yourself to stop and drink some water in between all the fun. If you choose to consume alcohol during your night out, remember that alcohol is a diuretic (a substance that causes the body to produce more urine) and it blocks the release of a hormone needed for water re-absorption – in a nutshell, drinking more alcohol leads to greater dehydration risk, but by drinking water throughout

your night you can reduce your chances of dehydration and worse, any embarrassing moments in front of your boss or coworkers.

This IFTTT recipe will send you a reminder to drink water anytime you check into a dining location on Foursquare – feel free to change it to whatever location “check-in” service you use.

Drink Water Reminder: The Middle of a Long Workday

You need to get out a client deliverable by the end of the day, you’re getting 15 emails per hour, and your boss keeps IM-ing you asking for status updates – the nature of a workday often makes it difficult to leave your desk and ultimately will result in you forgetting to get water.

On top of this, to deal with the pressure of the workday many of us resort to

caffeine (another diuretic) so we’re not only not drinking water for a period of time, but we’re exacerbating the threat of dehydration.

This IFTTT recipe will remind you to drink water at 1pm every day, in your method of choice – preferably one that will grab your attention from the busy workday.

Drink Water Reminder: When it’s Really Hot Out

Summer is coming which means most of us will be enjoying the outdoors but extreme temperatures increase risk of dehydration as well. With this IFTTT recipe, you will get a reminder to drink water when the temperature rises above a number of your choice. Alternatively, you can also use this recipe when it’s too cold out (as that can extenuate your dehydration risk, too).

Drink Water Reminder: When You Wake Up

When you first wake up, it’s prime time to drink water. Why?

• Since you have an empty stomach, it helps purify the colon so you can better absorb nutrients.
• It increases blood and muscle cell production.
• Your metabolism will be boosted with a chilled glass of water (at least 16 oz.) in the morning.
• It will purge toxins from the blood and help keep skin glowing and clear.
• It will balance your lymph system and help with performing daily functions.

Using IFTTT recipes, you can send yourself a reminder via text, email, whatever will catch your eye at a certain time (whenever you wake up) every morning.

Fitness-minded folks can use the UP by Jawbone activity tracker to help steer them towards healthier habits and crush your health and fitness goals. To remember to chug a nice big glass of water when you get up (or UP), you can configure an IFTTT recipe to set an alarm after a night’s sleep. Since many people often use their smartphone as an alarm clock, this can easily be done.

Drink Water Reminder: When you’re Done Working Out

When you’re exerting yourself, you’re losing water from your body in form of sweat. Because of this, it’s far easier for us to become dehydrated. When we’re dehydrated, other side effects include muscle cramping, fatigue, and breakdown of skeletal muscle – all of which can contradict the goals of your exercise regimen and even worse, lead to injury. In worse cases of

dehydration when you become dizzy or light headed, the risk of injury becomes even greater.

If you’re serious about your fitness goals, you’ve likely heard of Fitbit. It helps achieve greater physical health, but you can also enhance your workouts and avoid dehydration risk – in combination with IFTTT – by giving you a reminder to drink water after you’ve reached your daily calorie burn goal.

To sum it all up, with the technology we have available to us now days – there’s no excuse to not stay hydrated, even during our busiest days. So fill up your glass and keep yourself healthy.