When I kicked off July’s 30 Day Challenge, to get a full month’s streak on the health tracker Waterllama, I thought it was just a fun thing to do with a cute app that would help me keep hydrated. How could I have predicted that it would be around at exactly the right time - when temperatures in the UK hit their highest ever for a couple of days and keeping fluid levels up became crucially important?

I’ve actually really enjoyed the journey of this month. At first, it was hard. I really wasn’t drinking enough and there were moments where I ended up just downing a glass of water to try and top up the numbers for the day. Not ideal. But by the middle of the month, and by the time the heatwave hit, I was in a good groove of gradually increasing my hydration throughout the day, topped up with the occasional caffeine or soda hit to keep me going.

The app does a great job of explaining the difference between 100% hydration with water against a coffee that is just less than 100% versus alcohol which actually gives you a minus percentage effect. My switch to gin recently means that my negative alcohol input is offset by the positive mixer input, but it was a stark visual of the impact of those Friday night celebrations.

Also during the month, I completed a couple of the Waterllama challenges. The idea of each day’s streak is to fill up your chosen cute character with water to get your max hydration by the end of the day. Alongside that, you can sign up to a variety of 10 day challenges to unlock a new and different character.

Naturally, the first one I tried was the Vitamin Puffin, because I’m obsessed with puffins. This challenge was to drink a juice or smoothie every day for ten days, which I managed. That’s not a habit that’s stuck but it was good to achieve.

Then recently I completed the 10 day Tea-Rex, which, you guessed it, is to drink any variety of tea for ten consecutive days. I’ve realised that I enjoy tea without milk, which caused it’s own issues during the month - but hey, I got the badge and unlocked the character and learnt a lot about Mr C along the way.

So I think I’ll keep up using this app, maybe not forever, but definitely for a bit longer, as it’s done me good, it’s given Mr C rage, and I still have more characters to unlock. I highly recommend giving it a try.