Hydration and fibre tracker with the reference intakes printed on it

The gastrointestinal adverse reactions that lead the tables in the Wegovy and Zepbound labels, nausea, constipation, diarrhoea and vomiting, are all affected by fluid and fibre, in both directions. Too little fluid and constipation worsens; too much fibre added too fast and bloating does. What you cannot see, you cannot adjust. This sheet is a week made visible.

The reference figures, and what they are

The National Academies' Dietary Reference Intakes give adequate intakes rather than recommended allowances for total water and fibre, because the evidence does not support a single requirement. For adults 19 and over, the adequate intake for total water is 3.7 litres a day for men and 2.7 for women, counting all beverages and the water in food. For fibre it is 38 g a day for men and 25 g for women aged 19 to 50, falling to 30 g and 21 g at 51 and over. Those numbers are printed on the sheet so you know what "enough" means in the published literature. They are not a prescription for you: someone with a heart or kidney condition, or on a fluid restriction, has a clinician's figure instead, and the header has a line for it.

Using the sheet

The fluid column is a tally: one tick per cup or 250 mL of anything you drink. Ticks are faster than numbers and you will actually do them. The fibre column lists the food groups that carry fibre, whole grains, beans and lentils, vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds; circle or tick what you actually ate. It is deliberately not a gram count, because nobody weighs their lentils for more than three days. Three or four groups a day, most days, is a pattern you can see at a glance.

The bowel habit column is the reason the sheet exists. Write what happened, in whatever words you use. After a fortnight, the relationship between the tick column, the fibre column and this one is usually obvious, and it is the thing your prescriber will ask about if constipation is on your side-effect diary.

When a tracker is the wrong tool

If you cannot keep fluids down, that is not a tracking problem. The Wegovy and Zepbound medication guides list dehydration from vomiting or diarrhoea as a reason to contact a health care provider, because of the effect on the kidneys. Call.

Pair it with

The meal and protein planner covers the other half of the nutrition conversation. The FormBlends Guides site has a longer piece on hydration on GLP-1 therapy if you want the reasoning behind the figures.