Offering to get drinks for others during the day
The Basics
Many offices are air conditioned – this can dehydrate you (and especially your skin). Making sure you keep hydrated during the day will help improve you improve your mood and concentration.
Being just a couple of percentages dehydrated can make you feel tired, irritable, sick and can cause headaches.
The office staples of tea and coffee are acceptable up to a point. Up to three cups of tea or coffee can have benefits to your heart. However 4-5+ cups (cups not mugs) and you’ll start to get the nasty side effects, such as dehydration and the coffee come down (dependency on coffee to function)
Myths, misconceptions and excuses
- ”Coffee and tea are bad for you.” Like all things in life, everything in moderation, (except rat poison) tea and coffee can form part of a healthy lifestyle, up to 3 a day is acceptable, 4-5+ and you should be looking for alternative drinks.
- “You have to drink 2 litres a day.” This is quite a large amount of water to suddenly start drinking if you’re not already doing so. Aim to just drink a bit more than you do now (or start if you’re not drinking any) and slowly build up. Your body does need roughly 2 litres of fluid a day – but you do get water from the foods you eat. Water helps your kidneys function at their best. If you don’t get enough water in your diet, (from your food and the liquids you drink) you’re body will not be able to get rid of the waste products that it produces.
- “I’ll be peeing all day.” So what if you have to go to the loo a couple of extra times a day? This adds to your daily activity – result!
Tips & tricks
- Keep a small water bottle on your desk or near to hand at home, say 33cl or 500ml. Fill it up in the morning from the water cooler/tap and see if you can drink it by the end of the day. Slowly build up to drinking it by lunch and filling it up again for the afternoon and so on till you’re drinking between 1-2 litres a day.
- Water not only hydrates you but also plays an important role in digestion.
- Keep a count of the amount of water you drink on your Nutrition Card.
- By walking around offering everyone a drink in the office – you will be increasing your activity levels (walking from desk to desk), ensuring that you (and your colleagues) are staying hydrated and doing a good turn, all at the same time – not bad…
- Can’t stand water? – low calorie squash is an ideal way of drinking water if you don’t like it ‘neat’ – there are so many different flavours available – just check out some of the own brands in the supermarket… they’re cheap and plentiful – so stock up both at home and at the office.
- Bored of office coffee? Offer to go out and get coffee from a local caf&eactute; (remember a latte or cappuccino equals 1 Dairy portion on your Nutrition Card®) – if you go regularly see if they will offer you some sort of discount – can’t do any harm asking! This way you have a great excuse to pop out and get some important activity into your day’s schedule.
- If you’re exercising to a point that makes you sweat - your water/fluid intake during the day should take this into account. You should be drinking roughly 600ml of extra fluid for each hour you exercise.