h2o challenge

Did you know that men are supposed to drink 3 liters of water A DAY? And women are supposed to drink 2.2 liters. In one day. ONE DAY. Whoa.
I rarely have more than one bottle of water a day - I usually fill up my reusable water bottle at work in the morning and try to finish it by the time I leave around 5. Some days I do, some days I don't even drink half.
So Saturday morning, Jason and I decided to challenge ourselves and drink the recommended amount of water in one day. PS - If you want to know where we got the numbers, check the link through Mayo Clinic.
We weren't sure how we were going to measure at first. We thought about repeatedly filling up 20 oz. water bottles but then thought that'd be weird. Jason thought about drinking out of an actual 1 liter bottle. But we ended up drinking out of cups that we had - felt more natural. ;)
We woke up at 7:30am and by the time 8:00 rolled around, Jason had already drank 400mL - I was at 0.
Anyway. If you're wondering how we measured our intake, we poured water into a glass measuring cup and then filled it up to the mL line that would fit in our cup. I had a 500mL cup and Jason's was 400mL typically.

So we drank water, and drank water and drank water. We each drank chugged a glass of water before downtown to get coffee and go to the market. My stomach was SO full. I'm not sure how I made room for a double chocolate muffin, but of course I did.

After the market, we came home for a bit before I had to run into work to take some pizza and pop to a few girls that were getting trained at the office. On our way back we decided to take 53rd Street instead for Kimberly Road for a change in scenery.
This change in scenery led to us stopping at Steak and Shake. We both ordered water. This was tougher because we had to eyeball how much water we were drinking and not miscalculate because of the ice in the glass. We estimated that we both drank about 200mL there.
When supper time rolled around we were both getting kind of stir crazy in the apartment so we decided to go to Olive Garden - and thanks to Jason's sister Kelli, it was FREE because of the gift card she got us for Christmas. It has never tasted so good. :) We each drank a full glass of water there (and we were actually able to get it all down before the waiter asked to refill it).
That was 150mL.
I don't really remember where we were in regards to our totals, but I do remember we still both had a bit of a ways to go. Jason came home and chugged 600mL to get his over with.
I sipped on about 200mL and then chugged 200mL because by this time it was already 10:00.

We were struggling at the end of the night. But we managed to complete it!

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A FEW OUTCOMES:

1. Drinking water makes bellies VERY full. I could have went without a big meal all day. I was never at the point of being very hungry and my stomach never growled like it normally does. The water kept us full (but of course Jason and I still ate a lot for lunch and supper - oops).
2. Drinking lots of water makes for lots of trips to the bathroom. As weird as this may sound, I made it part of my experience to see how may times I went to the bathroom to release some water intake. I went to the bathroom 12 times yesterday. TWELVE TIMES. And that's when I realized if I drank this much everyday, people at work would think I'm crazy getting up to go to the bathroom all the time.
3. Jason found that it was easier to drink water that wasn't ice cold. I liked mine ice cold, but I must say it's a lot easier to chug when it's not giving you brain freeze.
4. I tried just having a glass of water by me when I was on the couch because I figured I could sip on it throughout parts of the afternoon but then I'd look up two hours later and realize I never even touched it and it was still sitting on the table full.   

Our method of keeping track of our water intake. The tallies
on top by my name is number of times I went to the loo.

If you're ever in need for an experiment to see what being "healthy" is supposed to feel like - try this.