Weekly Re-Alignment: Water Is Harder Than It Looks

I thought it would be a piece of cake, but it turned out to be far more difficult than I anticipated.

The goal of drinking 60 ounces of plain water per day was set.

In a culture that's become hooked on optimization and has turned hydration into a product category with powders, drops, packets, and performance blends, rarely anyone asks what a basic, regular glass of unadulterated water tastes like.

Why Hydration Barely Appears in The Shift Worker’s Paradox

When setting out to re-evaluate my lifestyle in week one of my re-alignment process, I didn't expect how hard it would be to reach the goal of 60 ounces of plain water a day, without any supplements, electrolytes, or added flavor.

Coming from a culture where hydration is essentially a product to be bought, in the form of powders, drops, packets, and sports drinks, we don't often hear about the challenge of drinking regular, unflavored tap water all the time, without relying on the sweetness or caffeine kick that is so prevalent in most of these products.

Sixty ounces doesn't sound like much, but when you're trying to stick to it, it can be.

I did not place much emphasis on hydration in The Shift Worker’s Paradox; nutrition was also approached cautiously and from a distance.

It wasn't a mistake; I had a very clear strategy. Hydration and nutrition are two of the most contentious areas of health science and can be riddled with dogmatic thinking, commercial bias, and misinformation. Considering that shift workers are already vulnerable to fatigue, metabolic strain, and decision fatigue, this chaotic landscape creates more confusion than clarity.

In The Shift Worker’s Paradox, I stuck to the principles of nutrition but didn't turn the book into a recipe book or a hydration manual; instead, I aimed to understand why our bodies resist alignment.

Hydration is very much in the same vein. Everyone agrees that it matters, but nobody agrees on the specifics, and that quickly turns the conversation into an ideological debate.

The value of a re-alignment program is its ability to let me test and refine my choices in real time. It involves a strict diet, precise measurements, clear failures and physical adaptations, a zero-profit motive, and no religious adherence to dogma. If the book were the map, this is what the actual landscape looks like.

The enormous size of modern water bottles is somewhat absurd, and they've become status symbols, constantly changing brands, colors, and logos.

They often picture it as a container they can fill, empty, and possibly upgrade when they think of a bottle of water. Coming in sizes larger than the last, half-gallons, gallons, and emblazoned with time-stamps. These bottles have been designed more for visibility than for practicality, with enormous handles intended to be seen rather than used.

Well-known for being bigger than standard cup holders, they no longer fit in cars, backpacks, or office workstations. Most of them would be better off strapped to a luggage rack, given that many people are not equipped to carry them around for an entire day.

At one point in time, these massive bottles began to transcend being containers and became an extension of the owner's intention, a stainless-steel appendage that is now a part of a person's identity rather than a reflection of their drinking behavior.

As these oversized containers sit on desks, in cars, and in hospital break rooms, their contents gradually grow stale, warm, and less appetizing. Even in glass or stainless steel, water that is left for too long loses its appeal because people are very sensitive to its taste, temperature, and the effort of drinking.

Dissolved gases equilibrate when water sits around, subtly changing the taste. Temperature reduces water consumption, making cold water the best bet for reliably driving consumption.

It's behaviorally difficult to get people to drink something they are putting off, as in they "intend" to drink it rather than refilling and downing it.

A well-known fact is that refilling a bottle many times produces a more consistent flow of water intake, outperforms a gigantic container that’s filled once, and that hydration problems are due to engineering gone wrong rather than a lack of access.

There is a widespread misunderstanding about how water and weight relate, and that adipocytes, or fat cells, store only triglycerides. Water is stored in the spaces between the cells, and when we don't get enough, the body starts holding onto water in those spaces and sends out signals to conserve it, things like aldosterone, vasopressin and cortisol.

Water won't burn fat in a single day; that's not really how it works.

It does, however, silence false hunger signals, restore cell function, and reduce stress hormones that block weight loss. In that way, water isn't forcing weight loss; it’s enabling it. And it fights for space in our bodies not by taking up space, but by sending out signals that it is safe to do so.

When I was counting down to hitting 60 ounces of water every day, I found that I was close most of the time. Coming home from a long day and saying I'll drink the rest later just wasn't a winning strategy, and I learned that the hard way.

Well-known 60 ounces wasn't chosen as a target because it's the ultimate goal, but because it's a manageable and achievable number that presents a challenge.

Sixty-four ounces is essentially no different and is simply a more aesthetically pleasing number. The real purpose was to pick a number that is high enough to demand attention, but low enough to expose the areas of friction in your routine, and sixty is just that.

Illusions of control can be given by numbers, but how we behave is what really matters, and hydration is no exception. It won't respond to putting off until later. It has to be faced head-on, or it doesn't happen. This is what I realized, and it was more important to me than the specific number I was going for.

So I changed my approach, and now I drink twenty ounces of water as soon as I wake up. Before screens, before decision making, and before anything else, because that's what gets my day back on track.

By doing so, I had three major effects: I got rid of the mental weight of catching up, my mornings are sharper and more alert, and the remaining forty ounces becomes a target to be hit, rather than something to aspire to.

Alignment is about reducing friction, not about perfection.

Water doesn’t go out of its way to draw attention to itself, nor does it need to, and its absence quietly hurts everything else you’re trying to fix.

Author: R.E. Hengsterman, MSN, MA, M.E., RN

Registered nurse, night-shift administrator, and author of The Shift Worker’s Paradox

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For educational purposes only. Not medical advice.

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