One of our most frequently asked questions is “How do I track water in my Cronometer account?”. Well, we’re here to guide you through it and answer any other burning questions you might have. So read along to learn about the all-mighty H2O!
How To Track Water In Cronometer
As of an update on August 20th 2024, there are now a few ways you can track water in Cronometer:
The New Water Tracking Widget
On your Diary, you’ll see a water widget. Tap on the glass with the + to add a glass of water. This will default to an 8oz glass with a goal of 8 glasses per day, however, you can customize the water widget to what works best for you:
Adjust Your Daily Water Tracking Goal: Tap ‘Water Settings’ and scroll down to ‘Daily Water Tracking Goal’ to select how many glasses you want to try to drink each day. Adjusting this will change your drinking water target and add or remove glass icons from the widget to reflect your personal goals.
Adjust Your Container Size: Gold subscribers can customize the container size to match the size of cup or water bottle they drink water out of. Tap ‘Water Settings’ from the widget and scroll down to ‘Container Size’ to adjust.
Adjust Units: The water widget defaults to fluid ounces, but you can also choose to track water in cups or millilitres. Tap ‘Water Settings’ to change this.
Reminders: You can enable push notifications to help remind you to drink water at specified times of the day.
Show Water Widget Entries In Diary: When you add a glass of water from the widget, it will add a ‘Water’ entry to your Diary, however, you can choose to turn this off.
Show Total Water Nutrient Target Bar: Only drinking water will count towards your Daily Water Tracking Goal shown in the widget. However, food and drinks added to your Diary may also contain water. The Total Water Nutrient Target Bar will be the complete picture of your water intake from all sources for the day. You can choose to hide this progress bar if needed.
iOS Home Screen Widget
iOS users can add a Water Widget to their home screens, enabling them to add water without even having to open the app. Long tap on the home screen, scroll down to Cronometer and swipe to find the Water Tracking widget. This makes Water Tracking a breeze throughout the day.
Add Tap Water To Your Diary
If you’re not a fan of the new water tracking widget, no problemo! You can use the old-school route of adding water to your Diary the same way you would add a food.
From your Diary, tap the + button > Add Food and search for water.
How Much Water Do I Actually Need?
The recommendations are 15.5 cups (3.7 L) per day for men and 11.5 cups (2.7 L) per day for women. If you’re sweating a lot during a work out, though, you should try to replace the same amount of fluids that you’ve lost in addition to the general guidelines for water intake. It’s a balance though, there are also risks associated with overhydration.
Total water includes drinking water, water content in beverages, and water that is part of food. We get 20-30% of our daily needs from foods and the rest comes from drinks. It doesn’t all have to be water, though. Coffee, tea and other beverages all count.
Be careful with sugary drinks because although they do contain water, they also add calories without much additional nutrition value.
Want to know how much water you’re actually consuming? Make sure that you’re performing text-based searches for your whole foods and choosing generic listings from the NCCDB database; these will list the water totals in all foods. Also, be sure to do the same when adding water you drank to your Diary – more often than not, branded products don’t include water on the nutrition label so even if you’re drinking straight water (like Dasani) it won’t be included in your total.
Why Is It Important?
Staying hydrated is critical for your body’s performance. Nearly all of your body’s major systems depend on water to function and survive. It helps to regulate body temperature, protects your organs, carries nutrients and oxygen to your cells, flushes out waste in the kidneys, helps dissolve minerals and nutrients so your body can access them and so much more!
Another part of staying hydrated is keeping your electrolytes in check. Want to know more about electrolytes? Read this blog.
