What do you count as "water"?
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I log drinks as with meals but water is just water drink when your thristy
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PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »TimothyFish wrote: »I find it interesting that people would log coffee and tea differently than they do plain water. If you swallow some dry instant coffee crystals and then drink a cup of hot water, your body can't tell a difference from putting the crystals in a cup of hot water and drinking that.
I found this on webmd. "Although tea contains only about one-third the caffeine found in coffee, preliminary studies show that the caffeine may actually help to increase tea's cancer-protection effects. Caffeine is a diuretic and stimulates urination, and you can actually get dehydrated by drinking too much tea or coffee -- so take it easy." So it appears it isn't the same as plain water after all, which hydrates you.
That's pretty much earned the status of "old wives' tale." Whoever is quoted was just repeating the same conventional wisdom that was passed down to them.
Do you know what else stimulates urination?
Drinking water!!
HTH!!
HAND!!2 -
I only log water that has nothing else in it as water. Everything else I put under the category of drinks that I made in my food diary. Except for soup, that goes in a meal category. For me this works and reminds me to drink more water because I can clearly see with a number count of how many glasses I am at.0
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TimothyFish wrote: »I find it interesting that people would log coffee and tea differently than they do plain water. If you swallow some dry instant coffee crystals and then drink a cup of hot water, your body can't tell a difference from putting the crystals in a cup of hot water and drinking that.
I found this on webmd. "Although tea contains only about one-third the caffeine found in coffee, preliminary studies show that the caffeine may actually help to increase tea's cancer-protection effects. Caffeine is a diuretic and stimulates urination, and you can actually get dehydrated by drinking too much tea or coffee -- so take it easy." So it appears it isn't the same as plain water after all, which hydrates you.
Yes they do have a diuretic effect but not so much that it would dehydrate a person. When I still lived at home we drank (I kid you not) 6-7 pots of coffee a day. This was me, my mother and brother. If anyone was going to keel over from the diuretic effect of coffee it would have been us. However I hear that eating a lot of negative calorie foods will help with this problem.
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There is no need to log or track water unless you are regularly dehydrated and use it as a tool.0
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stanmann571 wrote: »PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »TimothyFish wrote: »I find it interesting that people would log coffee and tea differently than they do plain water. If you swallow some dry instant coffee crystals and then drink a cup of hot water, your body can't tell a difference from putting the crystals in a cup of hot water and drinking that.
I found this on webmd. "Although tea contains only about one-third the caffeine found in coffee, preliminary studies show that the caffeine may actually help to increase tea's cancer-protection effects. Caffeine is a diuretic and stimulates urination, and you can actually get dehydrated by drinking too much tea or coffee -- so take it easy." So it appears it isn't the same as plain water after all, which hydrates you.
That's pretty much earned the status of "old wives' tale." Whoever is quoted was just repeating the same conventional wisdom that was passed down to them.
Do you know what else stimulates urination?
Drinking water!!
HTH!!
HAND!!
Beat me to it. It's like people (webmd, I'm looking at you) don't know what the term "diuretic" actually means.1 -
frankpappalardo wrote: »Thanks all! This is helpful. I hope to get to a point where I don't have to count, but for now I want to shoot for that magic 8 cups and see what happens. From my experience, if I only drink when I feel thirsty I fall way short of that, even if I do count coffee.
This is a good idea when first starting if you are pretty sure you don't get enough fluids in you. I did the same thing, then drinking liquids became a habit and I stopped counting.
To answer your question, all liquids and food containing water, like fruits, add up to a well hydrated body. In my log, I counted anything I drank, as opposed to ate, except alcoholic beverages. Water, soda, tea, coffee, juice, milk, etc. all got counted.
One thing I did was get a SodaStream. I like fizzy things like soda and seltzer so I would fizz up 2 (one liter each) bottles in the morning. I have a lidded insulated glass with a straw that holds 24 oz and would fill that and keep with me. As long as I drank one full liter plus, I knew I was good. Having that glass near me also helped with the mindless snacking I had been doing too.1 -
stanmann571 wrote: »PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »TimothyFish wrote: »I find it interesting that people would log coffee and tea differently than they do plain water. If you swallow some dry instant coffee crystals and then drink a cup of hot water, your body can't tell a difference from putting the crystals in a cup of hot water and drinking that.
I found this on webmd. "Although tea contains only about one-third the caffeine found in coffee, preliminary studies show that the caffeine may actually help to increase tea's cancer-protection effects. Caffeine is a diuretic and stimulates urination, and you can actually get dehydrated by drinking too much tea or coffee -- so take it easy." So it appears it isn't the same as plain water after all, which hydrates you.
That's pretty much earned the status of "old wives' tale." Whoever is quoted was just repeating the same conventional wisdom that was passed down to them.
Do you know what else stimulates urination?
Drinking water!!
HTH!!
HAND!!
Or eating food containing water. Hell, even using up fat make you pee. ~20% of your fat loss leaves your body in urine.1 -
I do not count water anymore because I am quite good at keeping hydrated, but when I did, I would count water and tea/herbal tea (which i take without sugar/milk etc). In the cold months I drink a lot of tea to keep warm so it makes at least half of my water intake on some days!
I wouldn't count milk and juice because I consider them food, and I also wouldn't count coffee0 -
federicafezza4271 wrote: »I do not count water anymore because I am quite good at keeping hydrated, but when I did, I would count water and tea/herbal tea (which i take without sugar/milk etc). In the cold months I drink a lot of tea to keep warm so it makes at least half of my water intake on some days!
I wouldn't count milk and juice because I consider them food, and I also wouldn't count coffee
Why wouldn't you count milk, juice or coffee?
Have you read this thread?1 -
federicafezza4271 wrote: »I do not count water anymore because I am quite good at keeping hydrated, but when I did, I would count water and tea/herbal tea (which i take without sugar/milk etc). In the cold months I drink a lot of tea to keep warm so it makes at least half of my water intake on some days!
I wouldn't count milk and juice because I consider them food, and I also wouldn't count coffee
Why wouldn't you count milk, juice or coffee?
Have you read this thread?
I think you misunderstand. I take it to mean they wouldn't count milk/juice/coffee as water but would log it as drinks. I count milk with breakfast, juice as a drink and when I was logging coffee, I'd log it as a drink. As I take mine black and it is under 4 cal, I gave up on logging coffee as well as water.0 -
federicafezza4271 wrote: »I do not count water anymore because I am quite good at keeping hydrated, but when I did, I would count water and tea/herbal tea (which i take without sugar/milk etc). In the cold months I drink a lot of tea to keep warm so it makes at least half of my water intake on some days!
I wouldn't count milk and juice because I consider them food, and I also wouldn't count coffee
Why wouldn't you count milk, juice or coffee?
Have you read this thread?
They are not telling anyone else not to count them, just that they don't. If they choose to not count them and are not annoyed by how much time they spend in the bathroom, who cares?
OP: everything counts but what YOU choose to count is up to you. Don't sweat the small stuff. Caffeine might make you pee a little more but not enough to be a problem. Sports drinks might make you retain water a little more, but not enough to be a problem. Just make sure your urine is pale yellow and you are on the right track.1 -
Ready2Rock206 wrote: »Just keep hydrated - there's no need to make this unnecessarily overly complicated with ridiculous rules. I don't track water because I keep plenty hydrated through a variety of liquids and foods. Just be sure to log the calories of anything that has them. I might not count the beer/wine or other alcohol because they can dehydrate you but the others are fine.
This. I don't track water.0 -
I tracked for a few days - pretty much always drank more than 12 cups fluids per day. (Yes, I count tea, herbal tea, iced tea, Crystal Light, diet soda, pretty much everything except milk because I view milk as food. Milk gets logged as a snack or as part of a meal.) So, now, I just hit the 10 cups water button at some point during the day so that FitBit doesn't get on my case about not being hydrated. (The choice of 10 cups was pretty arbitrary on my part, but there's a button to re-use the last volume logged so I've just kept reusing that same number. It's an underestimate but I also don't particularly care.)0
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Personally, I track only plain water as water - simply because if I tracked diet soda as water, that's all I'd drink. Tracking only water is a reminder to me to put down the caffeine, and pick up some good old H20. At the same time, however, I don't stress if I miss my water goal for the day, because I know I've certainly had quite a bit of Diet Coke, haha.
Also, plain water helps soothe hunger for me in a way that other liquids don't - anyone have any scientific insight on that? I may also just have some sort of placebo affect sitch going on.1 -
I don't track water, as I don't drink plain water. Coffee and diet soda is all I drink. Not dead yet.3
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I started counting just water, then my app I use updated to include all kinds of fluids and counted them which was neat. I recently went back to just counting water though, the 72oz I drink outside of anything else seems to do good things for me so I'll stick with it.0
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water, coffee, tea.
If i put cream in my coffee I log that by itself under my breakfast.0 -
Don't track my water intake and never have. Don't see the point since I usually have a cup of something liquid with me at all times. I only track it if it has calories in it.1
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