Water intake, Does Tea count and Coffee???

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Replies

  • Aemely
    Aemely Posts: 694 Member
    I agree. Herbal tea w/ nothing in it (no caffeine) should count as water!
  • firstsip
    firstsip Posts: 8,399 Member
    You're shortchanging your body if you count tea and other garbage as water. WATER counts as water. Nothing else.

    DT2ru.gif

    So, when you drink water with a meal, what part of the stomach does the water go into so that it doesn't mix with everything else. I don't want my body to confuse the water I drink with any of the other garbage in my stomach.

    Also, what magical properties does tea have to zap all of the water out of the pitcher? I KNOW I put water in there...a whole lot of water with very little tea.

    The tea binds with the water and becomes non water so your stomach rejects it and its stored in your fat cells to be later processed by your liver. That's why you shouldn't eat after 7pm, because then your liver is too busy to process the stored nonwater liquids

    Yup. I read this on Yahoo answers once.
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
    does blood count as water

    please reply asap urgent

    So, um, I think I will have to avoid you from now on.
  • lifeasthefatfriendofficial
    lifeasthefatfriendofficial Posts: 1
    Tea and coffee are not chemically the same as water. Both are diuretics and therefore work to dehydrate. Water does exactly the opposite. Not the same, and should not be interchanged as such. They can all be a part of a healthy lifestyle, but they have truly different effects on your body.
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
    I've never felt I could count coffee as water, because coffee has such a diuretic effect so it doesn't have the staying power water does, and it doesn't curb my appetite the way that water (or, yes, tea) does. I have the same issue with Diet Coke or other diet soda. I feel like I'd be lying to myself. But for those who count coffee as water and are losing weight or keeping their target weight, more power to you. It's never worked for me though.
    Counting coffee as water prevented you from losing weight?
  • secretlobster
    secretlobster Posts: 3,566 Member
    Yup. I read this on Yahoo answers once.

    how is babby formed
  • NNOFodile
    NNOFodile Posts: 5
    Tea does have calories, sorry for the bad news!! The ginger drink that I drink actually has 78 calories and my friends and I actually had this conversation because I was contemplating going to a strictly tea as a beverage diet.

    I actually have always disliked water highly and I normally drank vitamin water, the dragon fruit flavor specifically or juice. However, using the logic that the calories that I am drinking in my juice and vitaminwater(I don't drink soda) are adding calories that are taking away from foods or alcohol(:D) I am trying to at least drink some with a squeeze of lemon in it.

    Sigh, it's so exhausting, isn't it?
  • Faye_Anderson
    Faye_Anderson Posts: 1,495 Member
    Sources of fluid

    Water is the best source of fluid; it is inexpensive and comes without hidden extras like additives or sugar.
    Tea and coffee are sources of water and contain some nutrients if consumed with milk. Tea also contains antioxidants. These drinks are fine in average amounts (around 3–4 cups a day).
    Fruit juices and smoothies provide vitamins (smoothies also provide some fibre) and can count once a day towards your daily fruit recommendation. But limit them to only one glass a day — ideally with meals — as they are high in sugar and can cause tooth decay.
    Milk provides water and is a rich source of nutrients like protein and calcium, which is important for our bone health. Choosing low-fat milk will save you from the additional fat and calories.
    Other sources of fluid include low-calorie soft drinks and some foods like soups, yoghurts, fruit and vegetables.
    Sport (isotonic) drinks can help in replenishing electrolytes as well as fluids, and may be useful for those exercising for long periods.
  • Marc713
    Marc713 Posts: 328 Member
    Caffeine in moderation will not dehydrate you, so you could likely include it in your water intake if you were so inclined. I personally like to drink a lot of water to filter out the little coffee/tea I drink. I look at water as a good way to help my body filter out & pass the toxins from my body. If you just get in the habit of carrying around a liter/quart size jug of water & making sure you refil & drink 3 of them a day, you should be in great shape. I personally got a pitcher where I filter the water and for me it tastes better and I'm not going thru cases of plastic bottles. At some point I think I'm going to get one of those reverse osmosis filter systems for my house, but I need to read up on them...but I saw one for about $200 or so at Home Depot or Lowes.

    Anyhow, here are a couple of articles I found:

    http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caffeinated-drinks/AN01661
    http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5552790&page=1

    Just don't go crazy with the coffee/tea & you should be fine. Like almost everything else in life, moderation is key.
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
    Tea does have calories, sorry for the bad news!! The ginger drink that I drink actually has 78 calories and my friends and I actually had this conversation because I was contemplating going to a strictly tea as a beverage diet.

    I actually have always disliked water highly and I normally drank vitamin water, the dragon fruit flavor specifically or juice. However, using the logic that the calories that I am drinking in my juice and vitaminwater(I don't drink soda) are adding calories that are taking away from foods or alcohol(:D) I am trying to at least drink some with a squeeze of lemon in it.

    Sigh, it's so exhausting, isn't it?

    WTH do you put in your tea to cause it to have 78 calories???
  • Faye_Anderson
    Faye_Anderson Posts: 1,495 Member
    Tea and coffee are not chemically the same as water. Both are diuretics and therefore work to dehydrate. Water does exactly the opposite. Not the same, and should not be interchanged as such. They can all be a part of a healthy lifestyle, but they have truly different effects on your body.
    Technically not true, unless you drink tea and coffee to excess the diuretic effect is minimal
  • cmcollins001
    cmcollins001 Posts: 3,472 Member
    You're shortchanging your body if you count tea and other garbage as water. WATER counts as water. Nothing else.

    DT2ru.gif

    So, when you drink water with a meal, what part of the stomach does the water go into so that it doesn't mix with everything else. I don't want my body to confuse the water I drink with any of the other garbage in my stomach.

    Also, what magical properties does tea have to zap all of the water out of the pitcher? I KNOW I put water in there...a whole lot of water with very little tea.

    The tea binds with the water and becomes non water so your stomach rejects it and its stored in your fat cells to be later processed by your liver. That's why you shouldn't eat after 7pm, because then your liver is too busy to process the stored nonwater liquids

    OHHH!! Well, in that case. Ok.

    Water = water
  • agthorn
    agthorn Posts: 1,844 Member
    Tea and coffee are not chemically the same as water. Both are diuretics and therefore work to dehydrate. Water does exactly the opposite. Not the same, and should not be interchanged as such. They can all be a part of a healthy lifestyle, but they have truly different effects on your body.

    Soaking a tea bag in water, or passing water over coffee grounds does not chemically change the water. It's still H2O, with tea or coffee suspended in it. Also, caffeine does not have a diuretic effect until you consume over 500mg (about 5-7 cups a day) and even then it is a short-lived effect if you are doing it regularly, because your body will eventually become accustomed to it.
  • firstsip
    firstsip Posts: 8,399 Member
    Yup. I read this on Yahoo answers once.

    how is babby formed

    But who was phone?
  • sarahisme18
    sarahisme18 Posts: 574 Member
    http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/how-much-water-should-I-drink.aspx
  • FredDoyle
    FredDoyle Posts: 2,272 Member
    Tea does have calories, sorry for the bad news!! The ginger drink that I drink actually has 78 calories and my friends and I actually had this conversation because I was contemplating going to a strictly tea as a beverage diet.

    I actually have always disliked water highly and I normally drank vitamin water, the dragon fruit flavor specifically or juice. However, using the logic that the calories that I am drinking in my juice and vitaminwater(I don't drink soda) are adding calories that are taking away from foods or alcohol(:D) I am trying to at least drink some with a squeeze of lemon in it.

    Sigh, it's so exhausting, isn't it?

    WTH do you put in your tea to cause it to have 78 calories???
    5 tsp. of sugar :wink:
  • NNOFodile
    NNOFodile Posts: 5
    Tea does have calories, sorry for the bad news!! The ginger drink that I drink actually has 78 calories and my friends and I actually had this conversation because I was contemplating going to a strictly tea as a beverage diet.

    I actually have always disliked water highly and I normally drank vitamin water, the dragon fruit flavor specifically or juice. However, using the logic that the calories that I am drinking in my juice and vitaminwater(I don't drink soda) are adding calories that are taking away from foods or alcohol(:D) I am trying to at least drink some with a squeeze of lemon in it.

    Sigh, it's so exhausting, isn't it?

    WTH do you put in your tea to cause it to have 78 calories???

    It's a ginger tea. They took ginger root, ground it up, and there are probably some sort of additive found within, but the "teapack" says 78 calories. Needless to say, I have moved consumption of this tea to once every two weeks! it really tries to make you think that it is so good for you!
  • kimpossible471
    kimpossible471 Posts: 268 Member
    I like crystal light flavoring, but hate that according to folks here I can't count it as water.

    Now, I just eat the flavoring out of the packet, and count the glass of water I drink right after.

    Problem solved.:laugh:
  • Hambone23
    Hambone23 Posts: 486 Member
    I'm sure someone has already said this, but tea (for many people) and coffee are diuretics, which means they flush the body of water. Thus, you need water-water to replenish your body.

    And to anyone who says differently, I could give countless examples of the times I've hit the head after drinking tea or coffee.
  • NNOFodile
    NNOFodile Posts: 5
    Tea does have calories, sorry for the bad news!! The ginger drink that I drink actually has 78 calories and my friends and I actually had this conversation because I was contemplating going to a strictly tea as a beverage diet.

    I actually have always disliked water highly and I normally drank vitamin water, the dragon fruit flavor specifically or juice. However, using the logic that the calories that I am drinking in my juice and vitaminwater(I don't drink soda) are adding calories that are taking away from foods or alcohol(:D) I am trying to at least drink some with a squeeze of lemon in it.

    Sigh, it's so exhausting, isn't it?

    WTH do you put in your tea to cause it to have 78 calories???
    5 tsp. of sugar :wink:

    LOL, no, about 8 rocks of German Rock Sugar. That's all! The tea has it without adding anything additional.
  • spiregrain
    spiregrain Posts: 254 Member
    TBH, I never log my coffee as water, but TB even more H, if it didn't help hydrate me even a little I would definitely have died of dehydration like a decade ago, minimum.

    Here is an article from the NY Times on the subject of coffee and dehydration:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/nutrition/04real.html

    Basically, they say coffee and caffeine are not much more of a diuretic than water alone.

    Think about it this way, too: when you make something garbage-filled like an organic heirloom vegetable soup from scratch, at some point you add 6 cups (or whatever amount) of water. If that makes 4 servings of soup, one of the ingredients in your meal was 1.5 cups water. So if you were to log all the ingredients in mfp, one of them would be 1.5 cups of water.
  • heatherweber87
    heatherweber87 Posts: 21 Member
    Herbal tea would count, but not caffeine since it dehydrates you and coffee does not count sadly...coffee makes you more dehydrated!
  • patbuckner68
    patbuckner68 Posts: 1
    ROFL!!! :As I understand it, coffee is a dehydrator. Tea, not so much....but thinking about drinking the cup of hot water and then sucking the little tea bag... Over the top!! You are so funny!
  • madworld1
    madworld1 Posts: 524
    I only count water as water. Coffee and tea are both diuretics, which means you lose water the more you drink. So, if the majority of your "water" comes from coffee and tea, then you're losing quite a bit of it through a diuretic effect.
  • Cliffslosinit
    Cliffslosinit Posts: 5,044 Member
    Secret is you don't have to obsess and count it at all.
  • drmerc
    drmerc Posts: 2,603 Member
    ROFL!!! :As I understand it, coffee is a dehydrator. Tea, not so much....but thinking about drinking the cup of hot water and then sucking the little tea bag... Over the top!! You are so funny!

    I use coffee to make beef jerkey
  • LeeWorrall88
    LeeWorrall88 Posts: 80
    Its not just 8 glasses of water, its 8 glasses of any liquid.

    So yes coffee and tea do count. Although I do not encourage you to replace coffee and tea for your water, unless you mean green tea :-)
  • Lrdoflamancha
    Lrdoflamancha Posts: 1,280 Member
    Brewed coffee has calories. This I discovered today... even if you drink it black! Kirkland coffee has 5 calories per 8 ounces. So in my book coffee is now a food. Anything that is a liquid and has zero calories is counted as water.
  • heatherweber87
    heatherweber87 Posts: 21 Member
    if it is herbal tea (no caffeine) you can count it as water, but any beverage that has any little bit of a caffeine would not count!

    Some of my favorite herbal teas are from Yogi!
  • sullus
    sullus Posts: 2,839 Member
    I'm sure someone has already said this, but tea (for many people) and coffee are diuretics, which means they flush the body of water. Thus, you need water-water to replenish your body.

    And to anyone who says differently, I could give countless examples of the times I've hit the head after drinking tea or coffee.

    um. everyone hits the head after they drink tea or coffee every time. unless they die first. correlation <> causation
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