I can tell when I'm not hydrating enough because, about once a day, the following will happen: I twist open my water bottle, go to take a couple sips, and end up draining three-quarters of the bottle. I don't realize how thirsty I am until the bottle is at my lips and my body is yelling, Wait, water! That's what we've been waiting for!
I've read a lot about the good things that can happen when you drink more water, from weight loss to better skin, but I decided to start drinking a gallon a day because, frankly, I was thirsty. I could tell I needed to drink more water, and it was stressing me out and making me physically uncomfortable. I was constantly parched and felt fatigued, twitchy, and unable to concentrate. I couldn't tell how much of this was due to dehydration versus other factors, like not getting adequate sleep, but I figured that drinking more water would be a good place to start. I traded in my HydroFlask for an H20 Coach Gallon Water Bottle ($22) and decided to see what would happen.
Not everyone loves the gallon-a-day challenge, but I took to it immediately. For one thing, I only had to fill this puppy up once a day, which meant that I couldn't put off hydration because my bottle was empty. (This was a huge obstacle to me drinking more water: I hated stopping in the middle of a task to refill my bottle.) With the bigger bottle, I filled up once a day and didn't have to worry about it until the following morning.
With that edge of convenience, I actually didn't find it that hard to drink a gallon every day. My bottle had time markers to keep me on track (so I wasn't chugging a quarter-gallon every night). I didn't feel uncomfortable or sloshy with all that liquid inside me. I definitely didn't feel as thirsty. Though I can't say I lost a bunch of weight or that staying hydrated made my breakouts suddenly evaporate, my body just seemed to respond well (in fact, better than I expected) to this amount of hydration.
But the biggest effect, surprisingly, was not physical.
Research shows that drinking more water is associated with a lower risk for anxiety and depression. From my experience, those positive effects have held true: drinking more water has left me calmer and more focused while tamping down my feelings of stress and anxiety. It's another reason to make hydration a priority, even if you're not chugging a full gallon every day.