Habit of Health nutrition challenge - week 1, day 1 - why we start with water and sleep?

Many nutrition guides you find online will overwhelm you with vast amounts of information about what you should and shouldn’t eat, when you should and shouldn’t eat, and other rules to follow.  It can be difficult to create a habit when there are so many restrictions and rules to follow when starting a new fitness routine or nutrition program.

So, in the first week of the Habit of Health challenge, we decided to start very simple: track the water you drink and the amount you sleep.  By asking athletes to track familiar daily activities, water intake and sleep, we aimed to demystify the overwhelming world of nutrition while developing the habit of daily tracking.

Many of our athletes had questions about the amount of water they should drink every day.  We acknowledged that the common guideline is 8 glasses or 64 ounces of water a day  (https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-much-water-do-you-need-daily/) but factors such as body type, metabolism, and environment play a role in determining the optimal water intake. Instead of fixating on a standard, our focus was on creating the habit of mindful water consumption.

Today I got my moving in by doing my daily run and I did a CrossFit workout. I got a new water bottle to make tracking my water intake easier and I drank 48 ounces and I got 5.5 hours of sleep. I’m trying to play with the sleep tracking on my watch so hopefully I’ll have a fun little chart to share tomorrow.