Sadie Rhomberg ’18

WSS staff members Grace Yarrow ’19 and myself, Sadie Rhomberg ’18 wanted to do an experiment, with inspiration from Buzzfeed. Together we chose to drink water and walk a certain amount of steps each day. We found many different daily water intake recommendations depending on factors like gender, amount of activity and weight. After looking through many websites we decided to divide our weight in half and drink that many in fl oz. For example, a 120 lb person would drink 60 fl oz or seven and a half cups a day. As for walking, it’s recommended for the average person to walk 10,000 steps per day. To make it easy, we tracked our steps with the built-in Health app on our iPhones. Although our phones aren’t on us all the time, they would work for our project. We made our daily goals and decided to drink and walk the recommended amounts for 5 days and this is what we experienced.

Reflecting on the week, my skin, specifically my face feels more hydrated when I drink more water. To me, when I’m dehydrated my skin feels dry and more irritated when I touch it, but when I’m fairly hydrated it feels smoother. It sounds weird to believe that water was the cause of the change in my skin’s moisture, but I truly believe it was the extra water I was drinking. Although I never reached 10,000 steps, I am definitely more conscious about getting up and moving around when I’m stuck at home with nothing to do. Usually, I would just sit on the couch and scroll on my phone or watch TV for long periods of time, but now I’ll remember to get up and walk around for a bit. I think that once spring break ends and I’m back at school, I will be taking short walks to each class, so I will be able to reach 10,000 steps. Overall, I didn’t notice any huge changes but in the future, I will be more conscious of my water intake and the amount of activity I’m doing throughout the day. I know some people who count their steps can become obsessed with achieving a certain amount of steps, but for me it’s just a nice reminder to get off the couch and move.