Trouble with Water

margottsponer

What has worked to get me off my diet soda is Mio Sweet Tea. It's portable too - I travel a lot so I can carry my little bottle with me to flavor my water wherever I go!! I love the taste!

Sarauk2sf

As far as hydration goes it really doesn't matter what you eat or drink. As far as diet goes there's a lot of useless calories in sugary drinks that will definitely hinder your weight loss unless you are logging them and fitting it into your budget. There's no advantage to drinking a lot of water or anything else. If your urine is pale yellow then you are hydrated enough. Beyond that you're just stressing out your kidneys filtering all of that water and excessive water consumption can also deplete minerals your body needs.

This is the correct answer.

Yep.

raeganjayne15

Flavour your water.

Berries
Cucumber
Lemon
Mint

Theres many combinations. U wont even realise its water

amonkey794

I use water flavor packets and squirty bottle things. The caffeine in tea&coffee is negligible and you can use that as water granted you log additives such as milk, sugar, etc.

herblackwings39

Add Mio drops or crystal light to your water. There are also flavoured sugar free syrups like torani and davinci that you can use to flavour the water to make it more like soda.

Mario_Az

i bought a one of theses holds a liter of water drink about 3 a day helps me make sure to get my water comes in a few colors


http://www.core150.com/

KALMdown

SPARKLING WATER! It's so light and easy to drink - I find that still water just sloshes about in my tummy. It also feels less bland. I get a 2litre bottle every day on the way to work (only 59p!) and drink most of it by the end of the day.

I love La Croix lemon sparkling water. I thought it was the sugar in Coke that I loved but it was the carbonation. I would drink 3 cans of sparkling water, contained no calories or sodium.

However, now I don't have La Croix here and I'm sad. Perrier is too expensive and not as good as La Croix.

eversosquidly

I used to hate water. HATE IT. I had a personal trainer for about a month and a half in 2011. I started drinking out of those 16oz water bottles. The Dasani ones? I thought, ~Hey, drink one during exercise and I'm all set!' I found out pretty quickly that I needed to drink more water. I struggled to meet the requirements of my trainer. We had a fall out over food because as he got tougher, I got progressively lazier. But one thing that I DID get out of the whole thing was the ability to drink a lot of water.

I slowly changed the size of the bottle that I was drinking. I went from 16 to 22 to finally a liter. I really like the Fiji water bottles because they're square, which makes them easy to hold onto when I go somewhere. Or chase my dogs around the dog park. It doesn't roll under the car if I accidentally drop it.

Because I drink a liter at a time, I know exactly how many I have to drink to get the 8 recommended glasses a day. I wake up in the morning, fill up my water bottle, and do my BEST to drink a liter before breakfast. Then I only have one more liter to finish for the whole day! Usually, I end up finishing with either 12 to 16 cups of water.

So my recommendation is to get a bottle that you know how much it holds and then work your way from one bottle to two to three.

NewDad24

There is so much sodium in everything. Would you ever be worried about not having enough sodium whilst living in modern civilization? Your kidneys are not going to be overly stressed unless you are really drinking way too much water. Drinking more water is generally a good thing for just about everyone in most circumstances.

Stopping the sweet tooth when it comes to beverages has been trouble for me. I quickly began preferring this beverage to all others. It has artificial sweetener and a lot of vitamins. With other dietary changes and products, my sweet tooth has completely dissipated so that I prefer plain water to everything except an occasional glass of my personal product stock. There are lots of mentions of brand names here.

Some observations I have on the sugar cravings though, are that the cravings possibly come from low blood sugar levels and/or nutritional deficits. Occasionally eat some fresh whole super-fruits like blueberries to see if your sugar cravings decrease. A good deal of vitamin B6 from fresh whole tropical fruits like papaya and banana could help for getting energy from the carbs you ingest. Also eat some nutritious complex carbohydrates. Lentils are great; less processed oats are good too. With the grain/legume proteins and complex carbs, your desire for sweets should drop. If this is not doing it for you, it might be that your intestinal walls are polluted with some really bad stuff. Cleaning out your insides with lots of fiber is really where you should start. Once you do that, fresh fruit and other nutritious food is just about all that you would want anyway. How to get reliably clean without a cleanse product, I would have no idea.

Also in relation to blood sugar, I now take a product series that is equivalent to drinking two huge double mocha cappuccinos with two green chi tea every morning as my only breakfast. This is not Starbucks or something. It is specially formulated for weight-loss results. The mocha and low lactose dairy gives proteins that you need. The coffee boosts cortisol, kicking your adrenals, upping blood sugar. It is a jump start of stress in the morning. Too much can be bad insulin triggering stress; so watch out. But this gets the blood sugar up and the coffee/tea part without the mocha and dairy is repeated before lunch. The green Oolong tea has properties useful for diabetics and gets the fat burning rather than storing. That means less sugar being stored to fat; so more sugar is available in the blood without ingesting more carbohydrates. Oolong tea also has antioxidant properties. Like I said, this is all specially formulated for a specific metabolic effect. The coffee and tea you get from your barista may or may not have the desired effect; that coffee and tea is not formulated for weight-loss but according to your personal taste.

So I have more blood sugar than I am used too; most people say they have "more energy." I don't feel those sugar lows that bring me back as a slave to sugar for a quick pick-me-up only to be let down time and time again when the insulin kicks in to convert the sugar to fat. That sugar fix is an endless weight-gain cycle.

RAINMAN4462

I get the Hawaiian Punch Lemon Berry Squeeze flavor mix-ins, it says to put them in 16.9 ozs of water but I like them better in 20 ozs or more and for a 32 oz bottle I use 1 & 1/2 packets. Also if you get them at Wal-Mart they are really cheap (where I live they are $1 for a box of 8 packets) and they are only 5 calories. Also Powerade makes a new Powerade Zero that is absolutely amazing. I have a major sweet tooth and switching to diet was really hard for me but now I love it!!!:flowerforyou:

tigersword

These topics always make me laugh. People didn't carry around bottles of water with them constantly 24/7 a few decades ago (back before the bottled water industry exploded.) They weren't dehydrated back then. Simple fact is, Americans today drink FAR MORE water than Americans did in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It is quite frankly ridiculous the weird, insane recommendations people toss out on this site. If ANY of these things were true, how the hell did humanity survive this long without dying out of dehydration?

It's simple. Drink when you are thirsty, stop when you aren't. Drink whatever liquid beverage you desire, keeping an eye on calories and macro ratios. That's it. Water has no crazy magical properties, because guess what, EVERYTHING you drink that's non-alcoholic is 99% water anyway.

psuLemon

I wouldn't stress the water thing too much like tigersword said. You only need to drink enough liquid that your body feels hydrated. For some that is 32oz, for some it's 96oz or more. But you can add flavor to waters, you can drink unsweetened ice tea (with lemon) or stuff like Ice Waters (ice is the brand, it's sparkling water and delicious). Heck, i still drink diet Mt. Dew daily without it affecting my weight loss.

JessHealthKick

just drink it. You are in a country with fresh, drinkable tap water - be grateful, drink a lot of it, and see your body thank you for it.

/endbeinga*****

tiffaniedemayo

I hate plain old water, always have. My doctor said i need to drink more water, among other things... I've tried many different flavored waters, but can't tolerate the artificial sweeteners, now i'm trying 0 calories Sobe Lifewater. Can that count at my daily water intake?

Mokey41

I hate plain old water, always have. My doctor said i need to drink more water, among other things... I've tried many different flavored waters, but can't tolerate the artificial sweeteners, now i'm trying 0 calories Sobe Lifewater. Can that count at my daily water intake?

No, only pure spring water retrieved from high in the Himalayas counts toward your water intake!

Of course it's water. You don't have to drink pure water to be hydrated. As was pointed out before you can drink whatever you want, whenever you want, in whatever quantity you want. I grew up in the 60's & 70's and no one ever carried around bottles of water and somehow we all survived, and without being fat either!

chellycakes

Try crystal light.. Also think about this. How many calories are in each sweet tea? Or coke? I know I would much rather splurge on a cupcake or pizza or something rather than have a sweet tea! But it's up to you!! Do you make the tea yourself? Cut back the sugar or use Splenda! Good luck!!

MG_Fit

OP, if you replaced what you're currently drinking with water, you will start losing weight. There is so much sugar in sweet tea it's ridiculous and coke ... well it's coke.

Sure hydration comes in many forms. If I didn't care, I'd drink beer and whiskey all day. Fortunately for me I don't like throwing away the work that I put in at the gym.

I was an avid pop drinker. When I started to diet and didn't like the cals I switched to diet. Last year I gave it up cold turkey because I couldn't deal with the ingredients (mentally) anymore. Granted you may not like water, but it's better for you, there's no doubt about that. I'm not saying don't treat yourself to things you enjoy, just limit it.

dellaquilaa

I just found that, by cutting out the sweetened drinks, I could eat a TON more everday. And food is worth more to me than sweet tea or pop

I also kicked the diet soda habit just by researching the effects of artificial sweeteners (and I mean, in nursing and medical databases - not just googling). It's scary stuff, I won't touch it anymore. It was very, very difficult to stop, though - I had constant migraines, dizziness, all that. But I just kept telling myself that that wouldn't go on forever<3

NewDad24

@dellaquilaa: There are effects of artificial sweeteners reported in medical databases that are not available to the general public? Please enlighten us, and don't just scare us.

Sucralose is what an alcohol molecule weakly bonded to a benzene molecule? If that weak bond is broken (just takes some heat), you have one bad grain alcohol molecule and one seriously bad carcinogen. The more you heat your diet soda, the worse it gets. The biggest problem is that there is no handling instructions for diet soda or other Sucralose products. I have seen huge piles of soda, outside, directly on the blacktop, in the sun, near reflective window glass, in mid-summer, at an Arizona Valley petrol station for some promotional fill-up and get free soda. As a kid, I would slowly cook food on the blacktop with a foil reflector. Reach down and touch a can of that soda, it is way too hot to hold. Those cans at the bottom were there until the end of the month-long promotion.

To the OP, if you are craving sugar, then there is an underlying cause. You can use willpower to avoid sugar which is better than just continuing to indulge. But, if you address the underlying cause for you cravings, that would be the best.

My wife is pregnant and she has all kinds of cravings. Those cravings need to be satisfied for good health. Sometimes the solution to the cravings is not what first comes to mind. Craving sugar is craving carbohydrates and all the nutrition that would normally come from those carbohydrates if the other nutrition had not been stripped out.

Raddichio

I actually enjoy drinking water (tap water, not bottled)---often my drink of choice. I don't know whether drinking a set amount of water is crucial to weight loss or not. However, I do know that we need to be well hydrated for good health---how much that equals in each individual, I don't know. Certainly, every beverage, as well as foods high in water content, help with hydration.

I'm not sure, though, that everyone can rely on whether they are thirsty to determine that they are sufficiently hydrated. There are just too many variables. I care for my elderly parents, and my mother doesn't tend to drink much because she is rarely thirsty. I wouldn't dream of insisting she drink 8 glasses of water daily, but I do try to get her to drink a couple glasses of water or beverage of her choice each day. By sipping on it through the day, she has been able to drink that much wtihout any problem. Otherwise, she does become dehydrated. Even when she has been dehydrated, she hasn't been particularly thirsty. Some children need to be encouraged to drink small amounts through the day, or they become dehydrated. OTOH, DH rarely drinks anything through the day other than coffee, and he is extremely healthy.

I don't keep track of how much water I've consumed anymore. I generally have at least 8 glasses a day, but if I don't drink that much some days, I don't worry about it.