Why it’s time to be drinks monitor
When you concentrate all your efforts on eating a balanced, nutritious diet, it can be easy to forget about one vital component: water.
This is why the new myWW+ app now has a water-tracking feature to help ensure you get enough fluids. Simply tap the + icon in the new water row on your My Day screen to create, then start reaching your personal daily target.
There is also a water tracker in the Daily Mail 30-day health kick journal which we gave away to readers in Saturday’s newspaper. This makes it easy for you to monitor how much you are drinking and increase the number of glasses that you drink in a day.
One easy way to know for sure how much you are drinking is to fill two, litre bottles of water and keep them in the fridge. Then you just have to make sure you have drunk both by the end of the day.
You can add a slice of lemon or cucumber to the water to make it more interesting to drink.
Fluids are critical to ensuring your body functions at its best. They play a role in almost all chemical processes and are essential for digesting food — carrying nutrients and oxygen to cells (in blood) and carrying waste products out of the body. They are also vital for regulating your temperature and ensuring good brain function.
In general, you should aim to drink 1.5 litres of water a day — and you can count coffee, tea, squash and diet drinks as part of your total. Always remember to check their SmartPoint values, though.
But we’re all different and your fluid requirements may depend on many factors, including how active you are and how much you sweat or whether you’re expecting a baby (pregnant women need to drink more to aid foetal development).
Older people also need to drink more because the body develops a reduced capacity to store and conserve water as it ages.
EARN YOUR TREATS
We’Ve seen how you can boost your daily SmartPoints Budget by earning FitPoints for any activity you take part in, from dancing to dog walking and from Zumba classes to weight training. Based on the latest science, FitPoints is a highly-accurate measurement of activity, based on your height, weight, age and gender. It encourages you to make exercise choices that will have the biggest health pay-offs for you.
The most common reasons people give for not being physically active regularly is a lack of time. FitPoints help you to make the most of what you do have. As you can see, from the examples below, strength and high-intensity activities earn more FitPoints: Walking for 30 mins — 2 Circuit train for 30 mins — 5 Running for 30 mins — 9
These figures are based on a 55-year-old woman, 5ft 5in tall and weighing 14st 7lb. The precise amount of FitPoints earned will vary between members.