Eight Cups of Water

As part of Project: Lose Weight, I took the advice of one of my readers, Laura, and signed up for SparkPeople.com. Please stop telling me to sign up for these delicious goodies, because you know that I will, I cannot possibly stop, for the brilliance of the Internet consumes me. I have approximately twelve different email addresses, many of which I do not use, and three of which I check every few weeks just to see what’s there. And do you know what lurks in those old accounts? Junk mail. And every time I begin to wonder why I keep checking any of the accounts, I come across an email from an old friend who doesn’t know my new(est) email address, and so I’m compelled to keep checking my old accounts because you just never know what you’ll find there. And it’s a bother, really. SparkPeople.com is my favorite new toy for this reason alone: I can track things. You must know by now that I love to make lists simply because I can cross things off of those lists, and it always makes me feel so accomplished. Usually my weekend list looks something like this: Wake up Eat breakfast Laundry Grocery shop And, see? Already, when I wake up, I can cross something off my list. And even if I don’t do anything for the rest of the day, I’m satisfied because something got crossed off the list. And that feels good, doesn’t it? On SparkPeople I can track how many calories I consume, and how many I burn, and lots of other things. I can even track whether I’m getting enough folic acid. I can create meal plans and grocery lists, and best of all, I can track the amount of water I’m drinking. And y’all? I have a problem drinking water. But not just water. All liquids. I’m convinced that I’m permanently dehydrated, as noted by my ashy skin and constant thirst. I think it boils down to a pure, slothful laziness because if I want a cup of water I have to stand up, walk all the way across my house to get it, and by the time I get back to my desk the water is already gone. See my predicament? This is why I just try to ignore my thirst. Because otherwise, I might get the teensiest bit of exercise, several times each day, on the way over to the water dispenser, and we just can’t have that. Back at Project: Lose Weight, I was trying to figure out how to, well, you know ¦lose weight. Yesterday I managed to drink three entire cups of water, which may be a personal record of sorts. I might have also dropped four ounces from my body due to all that walking to the kitchen in search of water. My new goal is to drink eight cups of water each day, and I swear, I ™m getting to my point. The water consumption tracking device on SparkPeople taunts me. It dances around, practically advertising that I ™ve only had three cups of water to drink, laughing at me and sometimes even calling me names. Last night, to silence it, I decided: enough already! I ™ll just drink the remaining five cups and be done with it! So I drank two cups of water, back to back, before dinner. And you know what? I was full afterward. Miserably full. I didn't even have any room for dinner because all that water was sloshing around my belly, taking up all the space in my stomach that is generally reserved for food. And now I ™ve finally figured out how to lose weight quickly: I can't consume a pan full of brownies “ oops, did I forget to tell you that I made brownies while on my diet? “ when my stomach is full of water. All that to say, maybe dieticians know what they're talking about, afterall. ————— Jes Ferris now drinks water from a wine glass, just to feel fancy. She blogs at Chirky.com, shouting her mantra: “Pinky Up!”