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“Simple choices create wide circles of change.” — Unknown

Introduction

Welcome to my Blog!  My name is Claire Burdette and I am a senior at Indiana University studying Informatics and Health Care Systems.  I have a passion for personal and preventative healthcare, which led me to take the class Introduction to Health Informatics.  For the past month, I have been using an app called MyFitness Pal to examine my daily water intake.  As a college student on a large campus, I walk quite a lot.  I found that I often returned home at the end of the day with a headache and a half full water bottle.  I determined to find an easy solution to drink a healthy amount of water each day by using some of the digital tools that are now available. My primary goal in this exercise is to be mindful of filling up my water bottle each morning as well as drinking it all during the day, because I often forgot to do so.  Besides the negative affects I was experiencing due to mild dehydration, I know that there are many benefits to drinking more water.  According to an article in Medical News Today, water helps lubricate joints, boosts skin radiance, helps regulates body temperature, and removes toxins from the body.  Read below to hear more about my health monitoring journey!

Why MyFitness Pal?

The reason I decided to use Myfitness Pal to track my water consumption was because it has a very simple and aesthetically pleasing interface.  Additionally, the app allowed me to track food, water, and exercise in one easy location.  A comparable app I also considered using is called My Water Balance.  It has nice visuals of a glass filling up as you reach your water goal, however, if you missed a day of inputting data, you were not able to go back and fill it in.  Furthermore, they had features where you could add juice, coffee etc, to your water percentage, but it cost extra.

Images of App

               

When setting up a Myfitness Pal account, you add your weight, activity level, gender, and ultimate reason for using it.  My personal goal was to drink 2.1 liters of water each day.  On the app, you are able to input the ounces of water you drank in three common cup and water bottle sizes.  Once you add the amount, it totals the water you had for the day. Then you press a button to finalize your food, drinks, and exercise.

My Journey

When I first started using the app, I had a really hard time remembering to add the water I was drinking.  After a week, however, I found that I had become a pro at adding it.  By the end of the month my water consumption had increased from about 18L to 22L .  I became more aware of how much I was actually drinking and got in the habit of having a water bottle before noon, one in the afternoon, and part of one in the evening.  One interesting fact I found was that on the weekends I drank much less water than on the weekdays.  My guess is that I am less on schedule due to the absence of classes, as well as the fact that I do not carry my water bottle around during the weekend.

At first I had to go to the bathroom all the time because I was not used to drinking so much water, but after the first week, my body adjusted and as I continually reached my water intake goal.  In fact, I snacked less, felt less tired, and no longer had headaches.  I recommend that people use this appn to track their water intake, even for a week.  There were small pains and aches my body had that disappeared once I had my water intake on track.

Overall Opinion

Overall, I found myself enjoying using MyFitness Pal.  I don’t know if it was the competitive spirit in me or that it gave me pride knowing I was reaching my goal, but I ultimately liked the experience.  There were key factors that worked for me personally to make the process go smoothly.  The first was using the same water bottle every day, because it allowed me to easily measure the amount of water I was drinking.  This also allowed me to get used to knowing how many times I needed to fill during the day to reach my goal.  The second factor in my success was using a bottle with a nipple-style dispensing top, like those on a Camelbak.  I found that I continually drank more water than if I had a classic lidded water bottle.  I am not fully sure of why the top of the bottle mattered so much to me. Perhaps it was because it was easier to get water from the bottle and fun to drink when I was bored.

Some little things I found that did not work for me were drinking out of a cup because the measurements were hard to get exact, and I was not able to take it to class.  The other was if I had back-to-back classes, and I did not have time to fill up my water bottle, I drank less water.  As I began to get more comfortable with using the app, I found some changes that I think would make it more effective at initiating and maintaining behavior change.  The first would be to make it more visual because currently it just calculates the total with numbers.  For example, it would be helpful to have a large cup that represents the total amount of water needed for the day that fills up as you drink more liquid.  The second would be to have reminders built into the app to drink water.  I was able to create my own type of system and estimation of time when I needed to finish my water bottle, but it would have been helpful to have a vibration or alarm when I needed to drink, especially on the weekends.  My final recommendation is  for the app to include other drinks such as tea, juice, etc to increase water amounts.  While calculating liquids from water is a good start, foods and other drinks contain water, but these cannot be added to the daily total.

Closing Thoughts

My expectation for this assignment was to track my water intake but not really make it into a habit.  I have found, however, that my experience did not match those expectations because now I am in such a routine to know what time I should have my water bottle empty and how many I should drink before the end of the day.  Compared to other times I tried to change a habit, I found that I was motivated initially by the idea I had to complete a project.  As time went on however, it was not as much about the project, but the self fulfillment I received when my body felt overall better.  I think initially forcing myself to track my behavior led me to change my health because in the past I would have tried to continue for a few days but would have given up soon after.  There was not a force holding me accountable.  My recommendation for anyone trying to change a behavior is to have someone hold you to your word.  This helped me for the first week and a half when I was still getting used to the inconvenience of writing down all the water I was drinking.  Once I got into the habit, it became second nature to track my liquid intake.  My body had also started to feel the results which made it easier to continue.