Last week, Rob and I were discussing our health and fitness goals. I write them down, but he generally just wings it. We were talking about water intake and he found this cute app in Google Play called Plant Nanny. It has been almost a week and I love it so far!
Need for a Water Reminder App
I struggle big time with drinking enough water. Generally, I just sip coffee and tea all day, sometimes completely forgetting to drink any water at all. This is a terrible habit for my health and can cause bloating, tiredness, dry skin, and digestive problems among other things. It is even more important for active people to get enough water intake since they are losing even more water through sweat during their workouts. Having an app on your smart phone is a simple way to remind you to drink more water throughout the day.
What Makes Plant Nanny Awesome
Not only does this app remind you throughout the day to drink water but it ups the ante by making you responsible for keeping a virtual plant alive. I have had other water reminder apps that I would just ignore and forget to use within a few days. The key with Plant Nanny is a little bit of guilt – you need to drink water and track it to make your plant thrive!
How to Use Plant Nanny
To get you started, you will need to select a plant and pot. I chose the Devil’s Ivy and a simple blue pot. You have a few choices but more will be available later on in the app as seen below in the Flower Shop.
Once you have selected your plant, you’ll want to go into the Settings and adjust your body weight and activity level. This will change the amount of water you will need to drink each day. This is also where you can change from milliliters to ounces.
In here, you can also set the reminder for the app. You can choose to turn it off or set it for a fixed number of hours. The app won’t notify you between 10PM and 8AM since it assumes you will be sleeping. I am sad you can’t change this feature – what about people who work night shift? So far, this is the only downside I’ve found.
Next, you should go to your home screen and set up some typical water glasses that you use. You can do this by clicking on the bottom of the screen and your water shelf will appear.
To track your water, you simply long press on the cup you want to use and it will show a circle graph that “fills up” and tracks the water for you. To see your progress throughout the day, you can see a percentage at the top of the screen. If you click there, it will take you to your progress page. You can also see your History and success rate.
You can also see in the screenshot above the plant’s green bar graph. This tracks the life of the plant. As you level up, the plant gets larger (it grows!). Eventually your plant will grow to full size, and you will plant it in your garden and start a new plant. I haven’t gotten there yet!
Now, here is the thing – If you don’t track your water, your plant will die. I haven’t done that but I did have it wilt on me on my first day!
You also cannot track too much water at one time. This is tough for me since I kept forgetting to track my water and tried to do multiple glasses at once. Your plant won’t accept the water and it will warn you to slow down. I think this is a huge factor in why I have been successful with this app so far. I know that I can’t forget to track my water right away, so as soon as I am done with my glass, I go to my phone and log it. I then also start my next glass since I’m thinking about it. Normally, I struggle to get 64 ounces, and with this app, I am hitting over 100 ounces per day easily!
So some people point out that this app depends on you being honest. Yes, it does. You are tracking what you drank. Could you track more than you drank? Yes, but the only person you are hurting then is yourself. You feel guilty about your plant wilting, so drink some water. Don’t cheat yourself by just tracking it without drinking it!
I am excited to be using this app and don’t see myself stopping any time soon. There are plenty of plants in the Flower Shop to keep me busy for quite a while!
How do you make sure you are drinking enough water every day?
