Hey, Friend.
Has anyone told you lately that drinking water is good for you? No? Well, I won’t be that person. Nope, nope, nope. All that nonsense about our bodies being mostly water, and needing to drink 78 gallons of water per day to keep our insides optimally healthy, and our outsides… I don’t know… supple and hydrated? What I know is that there is a very particular selfie that I took a few months ago that caught my eye. This one:
We are cute, obvs, but… what’s with all the crows feet on the hot mom, huh? My entire eye area looks like it could use a good ironing sesh. [And now I used the word “sesh” unironically, and it feels like there is no coming back from this….] I think this is where most normal people just go and get some Botox, and call it a day. But because I prefer to make my life more difficult than it has to be, I decided to try drinking more water instead. But, hold up, Kate - how much MORE water can you possibly be drinking? As a health coach for people… As a life coach for health and fitness professionals… Surely, you already are guzzling liters and liters of this clear magical tasteless fluid? Nope, y’all, that is not at all the case. I am a health coach who hates water. All you water lovers, come at me. I still don’t get it. You could put lemons in your water, caffeine in your water, fermented grapes in your water, and you choose to put… nothing in your water, and simply sip on it, because it’s…. GOOD FOR YOU? Anywayzzzzzzz. I chose the month of February to
1. Drink more water, 2. Test out a theory about how hydrating more would somehow make my skin look better, and 3. Mostly prove to myself that water is stupid (which is what I have suspected all along, and then I can just go back to drinking all things that are not-water, starting with Earl Grey tea, and finishing with squash soup). I love (and use with myself and clients all the time) the rigid structure of 30-day challenge, when it comes to incorporating a daily habit. Rules are simple → pick a thing, do that thing every day for 30 days, and voila - you are one step closer to becoming America’s Next Top Model. No, wait. What were we talking about? This approach works really well, BECAUSE it’s so rigid. Want to start exercising? Do it every day for 30 days (notice that the key here is making “the thing” super small, so it’s sustainable for 30 days, and the hardest part IS actually the consistency). Slip up on day 4? You have to start over. I decided to drink 2L of water every single day in the month of February. Some waterlogged freaks claimed that 4L is way better, but I am just an average human female, not half mermaid, so 2L felt like a very manageable NORMAL amount of water that NORMAL healthy people would be drinking. Please go ahead, and venture a guess as to how this went. I’ll just give a brief summary: By February 4th, I had to re-start three times. THREE times. Because I failed to drink 2L of water in a day THREE TIMES in FOUR DAYS. I had two options:
Admit defeat
Do the thing I would tell a client to do
Sigh…
This second thing - my husband uses it a lot, and I hate it.
When I struggle with something, he asks: “Well… how would you approach this if a client struggled with this?”.
I hate it because it’s very effective in the moment, and I sort of just want to flail around, not be all rational and shit. I hate it because as soon as he asks, I know exactly where I’d go with this, and what I’d do, and what I’d ask, and what I’d consider, and what steps I would take, and all the coaching magic just pours out of me immediately, and forms this huge glittering puddle on the floor. Right there. Staring at me.
How annoying is it when your own weapons (um, I mean .. tools… TOOLS) are used against you?
FINEEEEEE!
If this was a client, I’d shrink the goal.
In fact, I’d cut the goal in half.
And so, I tuck my tail between my legs (because it truly feels that way), and aim to 1. Drink 1L of water for a week, then 2. Drink 1.5 of water for a week after that, and finally, 3. Up it to 2L of water for the final week.
So, here we are. Drinking stupid water for stupid health, shrinking the goals, and using my own weap.. Tools on myself.
Cheers.
Hugs,
