Lose weight? Exercise more? These resolutions were too common for me. For my first, one-week resolution, I chose: drink water.
I’m guessing that some of you may not find this to be an admirable resolution. That is probably because you drink water. I do not. While I’m not sure why, I have never been a water drinker. As a child I drank milk – chocolate milk mostly. On special occasions, I would switch to pop, which I have since learned to call, “soda” and to drink the diet variety. I watch Dr. Oz and read articles about health, and I know the importance of staying hydrated. Yet, I somehow never developed a taste for water, and since I never felt any ill effects from avoiding it, I continue to consume diet soda, and have even added coffee to my limited liquid menu (along with wine and margaritas).
I would like to claim that my altruistic reason for selecting increased water drinking as my first resolution had to do with the health benefits. In reality, I chose this as my first resolution because I thought it would be easy. I am facing 52 weeks of starting, stopping, increasing or decreasing things – why start with losing 20 pounds or taking up skydiving? Clearly, these are formulas for failure. I was looking for a formula for success.
So, for week one, I resolved to drink more water. Each day I filled my enormous red water bottle with H20 and refused to go to bed until all of the water had been consumed (by me). Easy? Maybe for you. Difficult enough for someone who has never appreciated water.
Morning two I already forgot to fill the bottle first thing. Morning three, I schlepped the giant water bottle with me to yoga and got chastised for drinking water during class – which could “put out the fire”. I’m really not sure what that means, but it wasn’t going to stop me. Day four I got a late start and learned that drinking right before going to bed can be disruptive to my sleep pattern.
However, day seven arrived and I did it! At 6:33pm on the last day of the first week I finished my giant red water bottle. I know you are thinking – of course you did it – it was easy. But that is why I started with the water challenge. One success led me to want to try something more substantial for week two. I already awakened the morning of the second week with thoughts of crazy challenges, but I I’m going to ease into this.
