What Happens When You Drink a Gallon of Water Every Day, During 75 Days?
I’m shocked with the results of this experiment!
Since some time ago, a lot of models, artists and even the Kardashian sisters claim that the top secret technique to stay beautiful is just drinking water.
This tip has never called my attention, but hearing about it for decades made want to ascertain if there’s any hint of reality in all that.
It’s nothing new that drinking water is pretty relevant in our lives.
Medical researches assert that, no matter how old or young you are, water compounds from 45% up to 75% of the weight of your body, including the fluids inside and outside your cells. Water may be the most significant ingredient of our meals and, of course, we cannot live without it. Scientists say that water allows the assimilation of the main six elements we require for our nutrition , which are: vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fat.
Mom, dad and even Beyonce would advice you about the importance of a proper hydration. From the ascetic monk to the most eccentric Hollywood actress will agree with that.
But can drinking water make you a new person?
Many people are definitively not drinking what it takes.
Researches assert that up to 75% of the US suffers a hydration disorder. Maybe it is not because of an insufficient amount of water that we are drinking every day. Instead of that, what should be enough water drinking is frequently overwhelmed by an excessive sodium and alcohol consumption.
Before my 75-day experiment, my daily water consumption was inconstant and random.
If you gave me a bottle full of water, I could leave it empty without even noticing. At the same time, I’ve been always too lazy to fill up an empty bottle and that way it could stay the whole day empty.
My average daily water consumption might be about half a gallon, that’s to say like 2 Lts.
I made up my mind and started drinking more.
It wasn’t just about more water; my goal was to accomplish some stuff I’ve been always laying aside.
In June I started a challenge called #75Hard, which ended in September.
#75Hard was set in fashion by influencer Andy Frisella, a popular tiktoker who has millions of views and followers. This challenge had its promoters and its detractors.
I will go deeper into my conclusions about the #75Hard, my reason to do it and the polemics behind it in this review. In few words, it is a brain and body resistance trial period. People willing to do the challenge during 75 days must:
Submit to a diet, no matter which diet, without distractions — what I needed the most was to take care of my teeth, so in my case I gave up sugar and sweets: candies, cookies, cakes, etc;
Zero alcohol;
Make exercises for a minimum of 45 minutes every day;
Read a book, 10 pages a day;
Drink 1 gallon, or 4 Lts, of water every day;
Make a photo diary.
I decided to complete the challenge.
In the end, from June 21 and September 3 of 2020, I drank a daily gallon of water during 75 days without skipping a single day.
Was it really that hard?
At the beginning, consuming that amount of water was actually a trial.
In fact it was the dragging part of the experience. The working out, reading and photo diary could be done at any time, but drinking a gallon took forever.
I already said a lot about the mental side of the process in my other article, but keeping a record of the number of glasses and bottles I drank was the part of the challenge that obsessed me the most. You don’t usually consider the number of glasses you drank through the day, but since I was determinate to do it, then I realized it became a recurrent thought.
As the experience continued it became easier to drink more, and I started the day charging energy with water, religiously finishing the last bottle before dinner. It could be even earlier.
Some days I had a sense of self-approval, marking it as checked. But later on I would feel the need of more water at dinner.
The main aspect that surprised me was to feel thirsty.
You could think your body knows when you have to drink, and when you have sufficient water. But it looked like no matter how many glasses I drank, it just made me thirstier and thirstier. It could happen that in the end of the day I drank one and a half gallon of water, which is like 6 Lts.
One day, while I was running around the park, I felt the water I drank earlier rushing through my veins. I had an overdose of eagerness that afternoon.
An insatiable need of water can be due to a serious heath disorder or even diabetes. But in my case, this only happened some days that I had been drinking without control, consuming big loads of water on a row.
Constant water consumption was the main factor — if you drink a lot, you should do it little by little in order to prevent an excessive hydration, which can radically change the level of electrolytes in your organism.
This win or lose challenge during the day ended up launching me on a jet of water consumption, that vanished my electrolytes and hunger and eventually raised my need for salt, that consequently made me drink more water.
When the challenge finished, my lesson was to drink constantly during the day and in the end I had no problem with drinking an important amount of water.
When I learned more about hydration overdose, I seriously tried not to drink more than a quarter gallon, more or less 1 Ltr of water every hour.
Gradually, about the 50th day, keeping absurdly and constantly full of water became my daily goal. It made me feel better with myself.
Did my skin become healthier?
Most people think that the main benefit of drinking water is to have a soft skin.
“Drinking More Water Cures the Acne” said an article in the Times of Asia a few months ago.
But do you really think it will improve your imperfect skin?
Not in my case.
More liquid and more workouts made me sweat more, and the dryness of certain parts of my face vanished, but sometimes it just came up again.
Actually, the theory that water consumption is linked to skin health is not yet proven by science, which has little to say about it.
Anyway, more water consumption has amazingly minimized the dim wrinkles of my face.
No-one was more shocked by this than me.
I’m 24 years old, even when I take a lot of vitamin A and protect myself from the sun, I have seen some thin wrinkles drawn on the surface of my skin. This is something I was really eager to get rid of before they became visibly noticeable.
And in some point, they were visibly gone.
Lack of water can cause skin become flaccid and lose flexibility. This will make your skin feel older and get lines sooner than it should.
Dr Murad said: “Despite water constitutes 75% of our body weight at the time we are born, at the time we are one year old the water percentage of our body weight may be reduced to 65%.”
As we get older, we dehydrate, consequently the water percentage of a grownup goes from 55% to 60%. … And when we have reached the third age, our water percentage goes down to barely 50%.
Now it’s not too late to change!
According to an article from the Journal of Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology, people who drank a larger amount of water and had a more hydrated meal presented a more hydrated skin and this would show a correlation between water consumption and the way our body produces collagen that keeps a soft and healthy skin.
Skin hydration has been tested to slow down the irritation of the tissue, being some kind of lubricant, even for the upper levels of skin, making it easier for the whole functioning of the tissue.
Consequently, those little wrinkles I’ve always worried about just vanished.
This was the most interesting and remarkable benefit I saw from consuming more liquid.
Gwenyth Paltrow said, “Full of healing power #ILoveWater.”
Did water heal me in any other way?
Apart from the amazing improvement in my face, I also realized that my concentration and memory was in some way enhanced. But after drinking so many gallons of water, I never saw any other improvement of my strength or my state of mind like many people claimed.
I don’t have a bad memory. I can forget a thing or two. Anyway, I really think my mind was more often working at its highest level, especially through the last instance of the experience.
Howard Murad says, “Your body tells you to consume water when you already missed about 2% or 3% of your water weight. Yet before the first symptom of dehydration, the efficiency of your brain and the coordination of your body are already decreasing — usually at about 1% of water lose.”
I kept a pretty constant drinking habit, so I never felt any kind of deficiency of my mental state, and that was just great.
(That doesn’t mean my clumsiness disappeared)
How many water is appropriate?
Andy Frisella is not a qualified sports coach, nutritionist, or medical authority.
I think a gallon is too much water to drink all in one day, especially if you have only one workout session a day, or some days you don’t exercise at all.
Google gives a lot of several tutorials telling what the proper amount of water is for a day. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine asserts that proper amount of water per day is 0,8 Gl, that’s to say 3,7 Lts. of water for men and a 0,6 Gl, 2,7 Lts daily water intake for women. Liquid in meals also counts.
At the same time, Mayo Clinic states that almost all of us can keep hydration if we just drink enough to quench the thirst, adding that our daily need of water may be less or more than half a gallon or 2 Lts depending on issues like muscle density, workout, general fitness and other conditions like pregnancy or lactating.
If you merely weigh 105 Lbs and you only exercise once a day, I would recommend you drink not more than half a gallon a day.
Anyway, I will definitely maintain a higher water intake than I had in the old days, but only drinking water whenever I feel the need to do it.
It wasn’t a pleasant part to count every glass and bottle of water I drank during the #75Hard challenge. Nevertheless, drinking 3,7 Lts of water every day is an interesting commitment, when you understand to take it easy and consciously.
Is it healthy to drink a daily gallon intake during 75 days?
Maybe it isn’t. But the idea remains the same: it won’t hurt to make an effort to increase the amount of water we usually drink by a bottle or two.
When you try to be more conscious on your daily water intake, you will need a more constant program that meets your needs — a 2 Lts bottle and a couple or glasses might be good enough for your day. To drink a bottle now and a few glasses then and a soup later makes it stupidly hard to follow a schedule during the day. In a couple of days you will become a water psycho.
Take care of your mental health. It is useless to make such a big deal out of something like that.
Higher water intake along with all the paraphernalia of the #75Hard was actually a profitable habit. Wrinkles vanished, and I sincerely think I obtained more lucidity.
It’s difficult to say whether it is a mainly physical or a psychological improvement. At the same time, how did all the rest of the #75HARD challenge really helped. But it was an overall good experience.
Add more water to your daily intake. You might not be aware of how much your body needs it.
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