If it contains water, it counts as water. (Except booze)

As long as I have been posting here (years now) this question has been popping up: "should I count x as water."
The simplest way to put it is yes, yes you should.

PLEASE READ: Nothing in this post is meant to mean you shouldn't count calories from items which contain water. It simply means that if an item contains water it is hydrating your body. You can still drink extra water if you want, just be careful you don't overdo it and add electrolytes to your system as necessary.

But you may ask, what about caffeinated beverages? Well, first there is the matter of caffiene's diuretic effect being very VERY overblown. The body of evidence suggests the diuretic effect of caffeine requires around 700-800 mls of caffeine to take effect, at which point with coffee you would have had 7-8 cups. This is then balanced against the fact that, if you drink 7 to 8 cups of anything, you are probably going to have to pee due to volume of liquid. So, a lot of this is misattributed to caffeine instead of simple volume.

The current recommendation from the national institute of medicine states, "unless additional evidence becomes available indicating cumulative total water deficits in individuals with habitual intakes of significant amounts of caffeine, caffeinated beverages appear to contribute to the daily total water intake similar to that contributed by noncaffeinated beverages."

Sources (both meta but I don't have time to read through individual extracts):
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caffeinated-drinks/AN01661
http://answers.webmd.com/answers/1166858/is-caffeine-a-diuretic

Now, what about things like herbal tea? Gatorade? Hot cocoa?
This is a simple one. Think of it this way, with herbal tea, you are just adding essential oils from the tea into water to give it flavor. So, you're not creating something new, you still have the same amount of water; you are just adding oils to it. So you should still count it as water intake. If you drank a cup of water and then swallowed a teaspoon of essential oils separately, you would count it as a cup of water and then a teaspoon of essential oils on your calorie tracker - two separate items. So why does this change if you mix them together? It doesn't. If it did, you couldn't count things like mineral water, or even water with a twist of lime or lemon.

What about juice? It's mostly water, just in suspension with vitamins, acids, and sugars.
Milk? Mostly water, just in an emulsion with fats, albumin protein, whey protein, immunoglobins and casein protein.
Soda? Water mixed with syrup, then carbonated. Carbonation converts a TINY amount of water into carbonic acid.
Nut milk? Water steeped in nut pulp with solids filtered out.

I hope this clears it up for people. The number of cups of water is a recommendation, but you don't actually have to make it 8 cups of pure unadulterated H2O. Interestingly enough, that 8 cups recommendation is an old estimation, the actual recommendation from the Institute of Medicine is around 13 cups (3 liters) a day for men, and 9 cups (2.2 liters) for women.

BUT the amount you actually need to take is reduced by most of your foods containing some amount of water. Those plants you eat? Unless they were dehydrated, they contain water. The air you breath? That has water too. This all contributes to your daily water intake. On average, food alone contributes 20%.

The one remaining thing I can think of is alcohol. This is the one outlier. Alcohol is a strong diuretic, it actively inhibits a hormone (cleverly named Anti-Diuretic Hormone, aka ADH) from being secreted from the pituitary gland. Without that hormone, guess what you have to do? Pee!

So, overall, if it contains water, it is water. Except alcohol because it inhibits chemicals which stop you from needing to pee. None of this says you should drink less water, what it *does* say is that you should count more things as water, and not rack your brain about it quite so much. Relax, enjoy your journey. It will take some time, and whether or not you should count that cup of tea as your last cup of water when you are already full is simply not worth occupying your time. If it seems like water, count it.