The Water diaries: Monday
This is day 1 of our attempt to drink eight glasses of water a day, for one whole week.
The before photo. We are not happy.
E’s diary
I never EVER drink water. Quite literally. I drink:
Tea. Usually the unhealthy black with milk Yorkshire Tea kind, strong enough to trot a mouse on.
Coffee.
A couple of Diet Cokes a week.
Alcohol.
And that is all. I don’t even take pills with water – tea works fine. I must have been functionally dehydrated for about 6 years now, since the last time I drank water in any quantity was whilst breastfeeding my second child. Very occasionally, perhaps about once every two months, I get seized by a deadly thirst, but when I slake it I have to add Sirop de Grenadine to the devil’s beverage, or it won’t go down. I am not looking forward to the Facegoop Water Challenge. I thought it was a horrible idea, but M is persuasive*.
9:00
I take a photo of my dessicated Monday morning pre-make up face in the bathroom of destiny at work. Gross. I fill a first cup of water and drink it, alternating with coffee to take the non-taste away. One down. I need to pee. Normally I can sit at my desk all day without moving a single muscle – this is stealth exercise. I hate it already.
10:10
I try glass 2 without coffee. It makes my fillings ache. I think about the futility of human endeavour and eat an apple. This is more or less normal for a Monday.
11:15
Headache. I raid the chocolate cupboard, which involves stealing the key from my colleague’s drawer while she is in the toilet and claim two cheap and nasty Guylian “caramel” seahorses. Decide to wash my Nurofen down with water #3.
As I am hunched over the water fountain a colleague comes up. “What ARE you doing?” (see? My drinking water excites comment). I explain. “You shouldn’t drink too much if your body isn’t used to it” she says “Like those people on Ecstasy who die from drinking too much”. Great. I look forward to my brain swelling up and exploding out of my ears. Maybe this headache is the first sign?
11:39
Mini-Twix. This is supposed to be about the water, so I reckon my usual diet of trans-fatty chocolate miniatures must be continued. Controlled testing. On the back of the Twix, I manage to force down the remains of glass #3. Did I take a Nurofen? I can’t remember, but my head still aches.
13:28
After a large lunch I decide I need a muffin. NOW. I eat it. I blame water, possibly water on my brain. The experiment will be cut short it I top 20 stone. I go and get glass #4. If I check my Twitter feed as I drink, I can kid myself it’s, well, not water.
14:29
I need another Nurofen, so I go and get glass #5 to wash it down. I crack and get a coffee too. I drink # 5 while I wait for the coffee and bring #6 back to my desk. I feel bloated and I am starting to get water reflux. 
16:31
I force down the remains of #6. Bleugh. There will be no more water for some time.
18:55
I eat a fistful of lardons whilst preparing dinner. Salty. A good moment to force down #7. After #7 I feel I am fully justified in eating 2 fairy cakes and having an honest to goodness mug of tea. Before my dinner. What the fuck is happening to me? The children gulp down glasses of the stuff and ask for more. Weirdoes.
20:20
I have to write this stupid diary so I have the last glass. It is leftover from dinner, sitting next to me, taunting me. It is the glass that bursts the camel’s hump, or something. I feel revolting. The thought of doing all this again tomorrow makes me want to hurl.
*scary
Total: 8 glasses
Verdict: The thought of starting again tomorrow makes me want to bury myself alive. In the desert.
M’s diary
I like water. I really do. I just forget to drink it.
I hate having to remember about it. I hate having to go to the kitchen to rummage through the piles of dishes to find a clean glass. I hate having a bladder the size of a walnut and having to go to the toilet all the freaking time. Water. Go to hell.
8:00
I get up and spend a half hour messing around on the internet. I inevitably end up having to leave the house in a mad rush, limbs flailing and laptop falling out of my bag. I manage to guzzle a half glass of last night’s stale water before rushing off, while muttering dark curses under my breath.
9:30
I buy a bottle of water at my workplace’s canteen. It’s 5 pence more expensive than a cup of tea. My body tries to trip me up in the stairs in retaliation. Twice.
10:00
I run around trying to fix things before the start of my lecture. I am hot, and a bit sweaty.The bottle sits on the table, staring at me malevolently. Can YOU fix this projector, water? No? Then STFU.
12:30
First half of lecture over. I have spent half the day talking. I’m pretty sure that’s -3.5 glasses, at least. I guzzle the water with my lunch of potato wedges and pasta sauce. Really, canteen, you are spoiling us.
13:30
I fill up my bottle in the girl’s toilet. The sign (above) says “drinking water”, but I have been reliably informed by the janitors that this may not strictly be true. Whatever. I have a challenge, janitors. A BEAUTY challenge. I take a picture in the tiny toilet mirror. Someone has scribbled “You are beautiful” on the wall next to it. I recoil in horror at the results.
15:30
Lecture finished. I have miraculously finished the second bottle of water to calm a coughing fit.
20:39
I sit here, typing up this diary, fighting off a vague headache. I’ve forced myself to drink another glass. It tasted faintly of lamb curry and banana muffin. I feel queasy. My boyfriend brings me another glass. He gets the evil eye.
Total: 5 glasses. Maybe 6 if you’re lucky. I’ll drink another glass during the night so let’s call it 7.
Verdict: uuuugh
Subscribe
I look forward to this – not so much for the results, as for the exotic cursing and verbal rebellion it should bring forth. It will work though. You will feel better as well.
Looking forward to this…
This whole “8 glasses of water a day” thing is completely abstacted from reality.
No-one ever says whether it’s meant to apply equally in hot weather, freezing cold weather, in humid or dry climates, how big the galsses are, how much physical activity you’re undertaking…
You could very easily get through more than 8 small glasses of water a day rushing about in a very hot country.
Not so easy to get through 8 big glasses of water a day sitting still in an igloo!
Clearly it’s nonsense.
Yes. It’s nonsense! And that’s why we’re doing it.
It better be nonsense. I’m not keeping this madness up. Uuuuuurgh. Water bloooaaaaat.
When they tell you 8 glasses a day(by which they mean 2 litres of water), you do know you can put diluting juice in it? as long as it’s the good kind, like High Juice, or maybe Ribena Light. I would suggest filling a 2l bottle, because them you know how you are doing. Also, you have to go to the loo a couple of extra times so that you aren’t full of water. I have a tip for going to the loo more often, but I fear it may be an overshare…
I drink pints of water to try to combat the sheer amount of caffeine in me from all the tea I drink.
No no no Lisa Marie. We are doing this the hard way. There will be no tasty flavourings. M has banned me from adding my water torture to cups of tea, there is no way I am letting her drink Ribena. Nu-uh. Pure flavourless, craptastic water.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww high juice is gross. GROSS. What makes it high, anyway? The brightness of the dye? Ew.
The 2l bottle idea is great, except I’m already carrying roughly 4 pounds of laptop, 2 kilos of cameras and a whole load of fluff and bits of crap in my bag. And as much as I’d like to improve my skin, my spine is a little more precious.
You are quite hardcore aren’t you? I am impressed with your level of testing. And your level of ‘if I can’t, you can’t’.
M, for when you aren’t eschewing flavours, the Lidl version of High Juice is like Ribena, and is beautiful it has pictures of blackcurrant on it, and you can buy chocolate whilst you are there.
For additional toilet trips, have a spoonful of syrup/honey. It’s ok if its on toast or a scone. The water molecules stick to the glucose ones and it helps. Or something(The bigger of the small children I look after has toilet issues). You should feel less full to the brim.
I never drink water either; so tasteless and wet. I’ve been dehydrated for at least 10 years now and see no reason to change. I drink coffee and red wine almost exclusively. I’m interested to watch your experiment unfold though.
Hooray! Everything about this is great, not least your wretched expressions in the photographs.
I never ever ever drink plain water, so very wet. Normally I kind of avoid utter dehydration by the application of fizzy water, but certainly not on the order of eight glasses a day. Now I am breastfeeding and really cannot avoid the nasty watery stuff, but already am totally falling short of what I should be consuming. It’s absurd! Is my thirst indicator utterly broken, or what?
So, day one, a total success, right?
Y’all are freaks. Water is lovely.
I feel I must encourage you to stick with it. Remember a couple of months ago when I was doing that horrible diet and moaning about being waterlogged all the time? Well, that diet was particularly cruel and made me drink *4* litres of water daily, but my skin was dewy fresh and lovely, and I slept like a *log*. It was really brilliant. I haven’t stuck with it because 16 glasses of water a day is a fucking huge and inconvenient amount, but it did work a treat.
Oh, one other thing that might help you want to drink water: salty popcorn (unlike, say, crisps, which make one want booze).
Highly, highly impressed. Little confused by the 24 hour clock but *sigh* not one to complain.
Before shots are fancy.
I’m in shock. You have indeed uncovered the great water conspiracy. We all know that the gazelle models drink water (so they say) (but then they do all seem to have crap skin, hmmm, so I think they LIE) and so I therefore thought that lemming like, **everyone in the world except me** drank water all the livelong day.
So about ten years ago I decided to start, and now I am a converted Stepford Water Drinker (along with wine and tea, obviously) and I have to say it is marvellous. Bloody annoying having to remember, but marvellous nonetheless. I keep a carafe in the fridge and fill it with free tap water and have a glass every time I go in the kitchen, which is often, as I am greedy.
I bet you become a bit obsessed with it. Or maybe not.
Courage, les deux!
Going to the toilet is cheating. It won’t do you any good if you don’t hold it in.
I know who you are A, and I hear you are PART OF THE PROBLEM. So enough of your “helpful” “advice”. (Unless you are another A, in which case, I am sorry for being rude).
Can you drink Perrier Lime or is that also cheating? A bit of fizz and limeyness helps SO much.
Water is revolting unless you are deadly thirsty. Maybe you should sprint around the block once an hour. You’ll want your water then, won’t you?
p.s. before photos = hilaaaarious.
“I know who you are A,”
Darn it, rumbled.
i was like you, drank alcohol, coffee and tea for 10 years, but have recently gone onto a diet that insists i drink 2.5l a day. ugh. BUT two weeks on and skin is clearer, weight is down, and drinking the stuff isn’t such a chore. yeah, and go hardcore, adding juice or drinking herbal teas is a cop out. fuck off Chris Evans.
Im with everyone on the “plain water is disgusting” malarky. The way i trick my brain is to add no sugar diluting juice (huge fan of pink grapefruit and barley) and then it actually has taste. It really does help you not eat too much crap i find, because you are feeling full. I also trick my brain by having a clear plastic water bottle on my desk at work, or next to me at home – weirdly i find it easier to drink that way – so long as the bottle has what i call a sucky top – one of those you pull up with your teeth. They tend to come in 3/4 litre size too, so its only two and a bit bottles, which feels like a lot less than eight glasses.
[...] This is day 2 of our attempt to drink eight glasses of water a day, for one whole week. Day 1 [...]
[...] Day 1 Day 2 [...]
[...] Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 [...]