Keeping You Hydrated: The "Intelligent Water Bottle"

A couple of weeks ago, I went to my mailbox and discovered a lumpy package inside. The mystery package was addressed to me from an addressee that was unfamiliar to me. Naturally, my suspicions were heightened. I hadn’t ordered anything online recently, my birthday had already come and gone and, as far as I knew, I wasn’t expecting anything from anyone. I brought the package inside the house, lay it on the dining room table, considered what could possibly be inside, then put the guessing game to rest by grabbing a pair of scissors and carefully cutting along the top seam.

Inside the envelope was an elongated bubble-wrapped thingamajig along with a 5x7 postcard and a personalized greeting that read, “Hi Valerie,” – and that’s when the light bulb went off.  A week or so prior to that, I dutifully checked in on Foursquare at my workout facility as I do every morning and, later that morning, I received a response tweet from General Electric inquiring about my workout regime. One thing led to another, we became “tweeps,” [you can follow GE on Twitter: @generalelectric] and GE casually asked for my mailing address so they could send me a token of appreciation for being committed to personal health. Yeah, I was dubious . . . wouldn’t you be? Was this really General Electric, or some shyster hiding behind a public figure simply looking to get my home address? Turns out it was actually GE, I did forward them my address and a week later I received this cool gift in the mail.

It’s called HydraCoach® by Sportline and it’s billed as the ‘intelligent water bottle.’ And here’s why:

From the HydraCoach website.

“The HydraCoach hydration monitor is a revolutionary interactive fluid measurement device that automatically calculates, monitors and provides instant feedback on fluid consumption for athletes, medical professionals and other health conscious individuals. Determined by a users weight and duration of exercise (sport version), the product will generate a personal hydration goal for the day. The monitor can be further adjusted manually in the setup mode to accommodate other known hydration factors (i.e. intensity of exercise, heat, altitude, pregnancy, etc...) to meet each user's specific hydration needs, or the recommendation of one's coach or other nutrition expert.”

Now for some real world talk. The HydraCoach actually keeps track of how hydrated you are throughout the day by keeping track of your daily fluid intake. No, I’m not talking alcohol, coffee, etc., but the good stuff – like water; you know, the stuff that keeps you properly hydrated.

Functions and features of HydraCoach

Sure, I suppose you could say to yourself, “But I know how much water I drink. I drink exactly “x” bottles of water a day.”

However, the HydraCoach keeps track to the ounce for you, and there’s no guess work on your part. The magic all happens with the built-in computer [see photo below]. No, seriously. It's a computer in a water bottle.

So now you may further ask yourself, “Why do I need something like this to tell me how much to drink?”

Well, you know, there’s this thing in life called a challenge. Sometimes, we as humans can’t resist one. Once you set your HydraCoach and based on your weight it recommends a daily (24 hours) hydration intake of, say, 83 ounces, when you glance at that little counter on the face of the unit and you’re at 2300 hours and you’ve only consumed 60 ounces of water, you may think to yourself, “I have one hour left to drink 23 ounces . . . I’d better get to gulping!”

You know you will. 

I can say this because it’s exactly what happened with me. I found myself striving to reach my daily hydration goal, which just so happens to be 83 ounces. It’s part of the competitive human spirit. In a very real sense, HydraCoach helps to keep me motivated to stay properly hydrated.

No, you don’t win a prize for reaching your hydration goal. But then again, maybe you do: You’re keeping yourself well-hydrated, which is probably something you haven’t been paying close attention to lately. And if you need to take into consideration other factors besides hydration being based on your weight (you’re a particularly active person, pregnant, heat factors, etc.), the sport version can be adjusted for such factors.

I’m happy to have this intelligent water bottle in my healthy lifestyle arsenal. Since I took up the personal challenge to lose weight, become more active on a consistent basis and engage in some sort of physical activity on a daily basis (such as hitting the gym, jumping on my bike or power walking), I've come to realize every little bit helps.

My compliments and thanks to GE for helping me to live a better life.

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NOTE: See Bon Vivant's Disclosure Policy relating to this and all endorsements and/or product-related articles on this blog.