Water intake

A rule of thumb I go by is... take your body weight in pounds and divide it in half. Drink that many ounces in water per day.

Or if your urine is pale yellow then you're hydrated enough. You don't need to drink 1/2 your weight or 8 glasses or any of the other things bantered around.

so I weigh 166 lbs........ half of that is 83 - convert that to ounces and divide by 20 - you are seriously saying I should drink just over 4 pints of water a day............... well I won't flush my body to that extreme thank you. I get plenty of fluid in my diet without it and have managed to lose weight just fine - no bantering.

When I talked with my doctor about the"half your bodyweight" recommendation, he had two things to say:

1) That recommendation really includes ALL liquid and water you are taking in. Remember a lot of fruits and vegetables are high water content, soups, tea/coffee, etc. Even things you think are not a lot of water (meats, pasta, etc.) have a lot of water in them. Don't worry if you don't reach that level (mine would be almost 100 oz/day!) but make sure you are hydrating well. It's really easy to not drink as much as we need, especially if we're doing a lot of exercise.

2) If your urine is like pale lemonade and you have to go every 3 hours or so, you're hydrated.

I'm a teacher and I have some 24-32 oz water covered water glasses with straws (they look like to go cups but reusable/BPA free) and water bottles. I fill both up with ice in the morning, then water. Drink the water out of one pretty much completely on my way to school (45 minutes). Take the full one in, drink it throughout the day. When I get back to my car - the other one is melted to cold water and I drink it on my way home. - Not sure how this is going to work in sub-freezing temps, but I'll probably just do one no ice and/or take that one in with me, too. This method means by the time I've gotten home from work, not including food, I know I've taken in 48-64 oz of water. This also doesn't include when I'm working out and I do another 24 oz plus usually. With that I'm up to 72-88 oz at least. So it's not really that far off from the "half your bodyweight" recommendation."

I worked up to this by the way. Too much water too fast if you're not used to it can make you sick (headaches and stomach aches especially). I started with one bottle. Now that I'm used to it, it's a habit.

so I weigh 166 lbs........ half of that is 83 - convert that to ounces and divide by 20 - you are seriously saying I should drink just over 4 pints of water a day............... well I won't flush my body to that extreme thank you. I get plenty of fluid in my diet without it and have managed to lose weight just fine - no bantering.

No one is telling you, or anyone else that you should to do anything. A question was asked and a suggestion was made, that is all - still not bantering.

So it goes by kg of body weight. You should intake about 30mL per day per kg of body weight. Yes - you have to do some conversions.

Coffee and tea count as 100% water as someone else pointed out. Tons of food that we ingest - like cucumbers, tomatoes etc also have super high water content. I have it in a textbook at home and even though I just went through it last night I don't remember. Woudl be interesting to see the water content of foods you normally eat and see hwo close you are.