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Welcome to day 15 of the step challenge.

Today, let’s talk about drinking water.

I know this is a step challenge, but staying hydrated is one of the best things that you can do for your overall health.

This is one of those “keystone habits” that has a knock-on effect, making so many other healthy habits easier to do.

Drinking enough water will help you maximise physical performance, boost energy levels and brain function, reduce headaches and constipation, reduce hunger, and help with fat loss.

In the Sleekgeek Coaching Program, we occasionally challenge our clients to drink less calorie-dense drinks and more (or only) calorie-free drinks (like water) for 2 weeks.

This means either reducing their intake of drinks that contain calories, or making swaps and substitutions for lower-calorie or zero-calorie alternatives.

This is a “hard” task for most people, but it’s usually a game-changer in helping them to bust through weight loss plateaus and also makes maintaining their weight loss so much easier.

⚠️ Why are calories in drinks a problem?

Most people that we work with at Sleekgeek are looking to either lose weight or maintain the weight that they’ve recently lost.

If you’re taking part in this Step Challenge, there’s a good chance you have this goal too.

This means being in some kind of calorie deficit to lose weight or not eating too much above maintenance calories in order to maintain your weight.

Swapping out calorie-dense drinks for similar but lower-calorie alternatives is an easy and powerful win as it’s usually fairly quick, easy, and cheap to do (whereas healthy food substitutions are often a lot more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive).

Other factors to also consider are:

• Most people don’t realise just how many calories are actually in the drinks that they drink, so they end up overconsuming calories without meaning to.
• It’s easy to drink more calorie-dense drinks than we mean to (especially when it comes to things like coffee or alcohol).
• Most of the calories that we consume from drinks are unhelpful and “empty” of useful nutrition.
• Calorie-dense drinks are usually loaded with sugar, preservatives, caffeine, and alcohol which can be counter-productive to our health and goals when consumed in excess.
• When you drink calorie-dense drinks, you displace (or replace) healthier drinks that are better at hydrating you or healthy food that you would otherwise have eaten instead of those calories.
• Some calorie-dense drinks can impair your future judgement or make you more likely to make additional bad choices. Alcohol is an easy one to understand with its intoxication effects, but even just a sugary drink may make you more likely to crave other sugary high-calorie foods in the future.

For many, drinking too many calories on a daily or weekly basis is often one of the limiting factors that are holding them back from achieving their health and fitness goals.

Another angle to look at is:

😍 Do your drinks add value?

To be clear, calories in drinks aren’t “bad”.

You’re not a bad person for drinking fruit juice and a good person for drinking water.

But calories in drinks can often be unhelpful and counterproductive to your goals, which is a shame.

I’d like to encourage you to pay attention to the quality of what you’re drinking and how that contributes to your life.

A saying that we like to use at Sleekgeek is “Drinks should earn their rent.”

Do your drinks:

• Support your weight loss or health goals?
• Hydrate you and help you replenish the nutrients that you’ve lost?
• Make you feel physically good and satisfied?
• Make you feel happy and proud of your choices?
• Add significant meaning and value to your life?

Each drink should be a conscious choice, rather than a mindless one.

Let’s choose more water today.

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Don’t forget to post your Step Challenge journey in the Sleekgeek Health Revolution Facebook group using the hashtag #StepChallenge AND tick off your steps goal on the Challenge Tracker.