Early Retirement Extreme Forums

What is your system for staying hydrated?

For me at the moment, I drink water at 1h intervals in the morning when I study (when I am not at work in the morning). It is very easy to do it with the pomodoro technique. But when I am in circumstances out of ordinary (at work and need to be on the move a lot or attend people, driving a considerable distance which I rarely do, or on holidays hiking in hot weather) I can forget to drink enough and it can seriously mess up a variety of other things. Eg. it is more difficult to concentrate, my skin is poorly and I am more tired but at the same time sleep quality is poor.

In MBTI lingo, my teenage Si sometimes forgets what it feels like to be dehydrated and it so confuses the Ni driver and Te pilot. It is really annoying because when I have things in order with hydration life is so much more wonderful. And it can actually take me some time (days) to arrive at the 'aha' moment and just drink more water.

Drinking games or drinking alarms?

Si third here. Use to forget to eat/drink when younger but now it is hard to imagine forgetting this stuff.

I drink water when I’m thirsty.

I suffer from chronic kidney stones. I’ve passed five in 30 years. This motivates me to drink a lot of water.

It maybe my imagination but I think I can trace their formation back to two stretches in my life where I worked obsessively in a hot environment where I didn’t remember to drink much water. I was kind of obsessed with my job and didn’t realize what I’d done till years later. I have periodic cat scans (from other medical conditions) that kind of support this theory. Intense dehydration rapidly (three months) formed the stones that hung around for years after the event.

There are clinical studies on US soldiers deployed in Iraq developing stones in very short periods. Too much sweating and not enough hydration can lead to stones if you have the right kind of biochemistry.

Being prone to this I now drink a lot of water. I like those glass lined sports bottles when I’m out on the town. I have a few double walled flasks. And a few 16oz tumblers I keep lying around just to remind myself to drink water.

This fell on a fertile soil @Sclass as my close relatives had problems with kidney stones. Maybe I will get these bottles.

For me, it’s okay most of the time, but recently went from cool Scotland to heatwave ridden Europe travelling for 2 weeks and it just just hit home that for a while I haven’t afforded myself the opportunity to rehydrate properly.

Yep. The downside of drinking so much water regularly is I’ve become a total wimp in the elements. If it is a little hot and dry I really need to have a flask of water on hand to feel okay. I’ve acclimated to it. I’m like a frog in the desert. I get really nervous and cannot really make it an hour without a sip. This usually isn’t a problem but excursions require a little planning or I’m frantically searching for a convenience store or vending machine to purchase a bottle of water. I keep a gallon in the trunk of my car to refill my flask. Restrooms are also an inconvenience especially since I live in towns with homeless issues.

The cat scans of my kidneys are really interesting. I’ve had stones for decades but they’ll be gone for years then suddenly show up in a scan a year after having none. Then I count them off as I painfully pass them over the next five years. Because the scans are high resolution I can actually recognize the individual stones by their shape and the side they’re on. Just saying it’s not something that forms slowly over many years. It just suddenly appears and then you have years of hell as your body gets rid of them. So my feeling is even being stupid for a summer and getting dehydrated for a few months may cause problems if you have the propensity to form stones.

Mine are calcium oxalate and nothing will dissolve them. Once you have them they’ll be there no matter how much water you drink…till they pass. The strategy is to keep enough water going through so they don’t form and grow.

Old wives tale for this problem of breaking up kidney stones is to drink a gallon of water with 1/4th if that squeezed lemon…Not sure if there is any truth to that.

My system is to keep an old bottle of Bulleit bourbon around and use that as my water bottle. It fits my hand nice and the stopper makes a fun squeak when I unstopper it. I just... drink more water when I'm drinking it out of that thing. I've had it since 2014 or so and used to keep it at my desk in the office.

AxelHeyst wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 08, 2022 3:27 pm

My system is to keep an old bottle of Bulleit bourbon around and use that as my water bottle.

That's great. It reminds me of a friend in college who would reuse a 40 oz. clear bottle as his water bottle. Easy to clean and easy to replace if he happened to forget it somewhere. It was funny because those bottles are fairly notorious, but people weren't used to seeing them without labels and with a clear liquid in them. Lots of double-takes when we were walking around

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 07, 2022 7:31 am

What is your system for staying hydrated?

A big game-changer for me during outdoor adventures was switching from water bottles to a hydration bladder. When I'm hiking or biking I'm carrying 2-3 liters of water and have a hose on my backpack for easy access. It is certainly a little heavier with the extra water weight, but I find I drink a lot more water because I don't have to stop and open a water bottle. I feel a lot better on these trips as well because I tend to consume a lot more water.

On a daily basis, I don't have much trouble staying hydrated. I enjoy a few cups of coffee and tea in the morning (diuretics but I'm still consuming quite a bit of liquid there). I drink a lot of water while I am working out, which I do almost every day - usually around lunchtime. At meals I drink out of pint glasses or large mason jars, which seems to encourage me to drink more volume. I regularly keep a water bottle or mason jar out as a visual reminder to drink.

Lately I've been trying to drink a pint of water if I'm feeling hungry, to see if I'm actually just a bit dehydrated or need a state change. If I'm still hungry 10 minutes later I might have a snack or meal.

When it is hot outside I'll keep a large pitcher of water in the fridge with a few cucumber slices, some mint, or lemon slices in it. It is a visual reminder to drink water every time I open the fridge.

One tip I've recommended to DW is to immediately drink a large glass of water when waking up.

I drink around 3 liters of tap water a day and rarely leave the house without my stainless steel water bottle. It's an insulated high quality bottle, the water stays cool in it and doesn't taste weird even if it's in the bottle for hours.

At home I fill a larg glass with water (400ml) and drink it in one go, several times a day. That way it's easy to drink enough. I'm getting headaches if I drink less, so I'm motivated to keep hydrated.