SKIN HYDRATION SERIES - Week 1 - There's water in coffee, right? 04-30-2018

If you've been following along on Instagram you will know that I've been attempting (heavy emphasis on attempting) a water drinking challenge. The goal is to drink 8 glasses of water a day for 30 days with the mission being to see how my skin improves in regards to dryness and overall health.

You'll also know that I SUCK AT THIS. I generally drink 1 glass of water a day. And I failed hard during Week 1. I generally felt like Jake Peralta in the episode where Amy makes him drink 8 glasses of water a day. Peeing a lot and thinking 'there's water in coffee, right? That counts?' [If you aren't a Brooklyn Nine Nine fan, I'm sorry, we can't be friends.]

Tracking my progress

Day 1

• Super pumped about the challenge
• Drank 6/8 - HUGE improvement for me

Day 2

• Drank 4 glasses.. still an improvement but loosing focus

Day 3

• 3 glasses.. uh oh I'm getting worse at this

Day 4

• 1 glass! 

Day 5

• Probably 1-2 glasses - yep, I wasn't even tracking it anymore

Day 6 & 7

• Probably 3 glasses over the whole weekend

Thoughts/struggles

Now this week wasn't a total fail. I still learnt a lot and now I can apply it to week 2!

Container preference

For me personally, I found it easier to drink from a glass than I did a bottle. I tried to drink from a 1L bottle each day and I think it just overwhelmed me because it took so long to get to the end. However other people prefer it because they see 8 individual glasses more overwhelming than 2 full bottles. I also think I enjoyed drinking out a glass because I simply prefer glass over plastic and my water bottle is plastic. Also, I have a super cute glass and cute things encourage me to use them. (Yes, I'm basically a child.. no judging!)

Being home vs being out

I realise that you can't drink from a glass out of the house, because, well, that's not practical. I did notice a decline in my drinking on days where I was out and about. I'm going to use a bottle for when I leave the house.

Tracking progress

I'm a very visual person and I also love to do lists, planners, and ticking things off so I was tracking my drinking in my Mi Goals Goal Digger Planner (my life does not function without it). I noticed that on days that I didn't have my planner handy, such as a day out shopping, I drank less water. Perhaps I need a more portable from of tracking. An app maybe?

Cold weather

A fellow biz friend (Issy from Seriously Milestones - follow her if you don't already. She's hilarious and so are her kids.), pointed out the fact that I started at the worst possible time - when Melbourne is beginning to get cold. I really do not enjoy cold water or cold weather. I was much less motivated to drink water when the weather was cooler. A couple of people did suggest drinking hot/warm water however I'm notorious for leaving my hot beverages and forgetting about them until they get cold. So this didn't really work for me.

The Results

Skin appearance/changes

So I didn't expect to see much change over the week seeing as I didn't drink that 8 glasses a day. However, I did drink way more than I'm used to. But did it have an effect on my skin?

On day 1 of the challenge I posted this photo to Instagram to document my skin's state:

Skin is dry around mouth and over nose, some pimples and dark under eyes. Generally even skin tone still.

I did notice that my skin felt less tight and dehydrated on days that I drank more than 3 glasses of water. My skin felt more elastic. The dry areas around my mouth improved drastically and practically disappeared. However, these areas came a bit dry again on days when I drank very little water.

Overall body feel/changes

So, did I feel different in my body? Other than having to pee literally all the time, no not really. I don't think I drank enough water to say it affected my body or general wellbeing.

Tips & Take aways

So this is what I learnt in Week 1 and will apply (or try to) to Week 2:

• Drink from cute glass when home
• Always bring a water bottle when I'm out (maybe a smaller less intimidating one)
• Have a more accessible tracker; maybe an app
• Maybe schedule in the glasses?

Okay so here we go! Week 2!

If you'd like to follow me along (and laugh at me) follow @vee.pbathandbody on Instagram. I'll be posting every couple of days in Instagram stories and if you missed out on last weeks stories there is a highlight called 'Water Challenge' on our profile.