I don't like water. Will diet coke do instead?

You need to drink at least 8 cups - you think you would manage to drink 8 cups of diet soda a day? I LOVE coke zero but I only manage 1 can a day - sometimes 2 if I work in my yard or renovate my house (I'm a huge DIYer) a lot. Other than this, I couldn't drink that much.

IMO, watch the juices. The same way you have to watch the amount of fruits you eat - too much sugar - even if it's good sugars.

Have you tried Mio? It's a water inhancer. yes it has some chemicals in it but maybe it would get you into the habit and you could slowly back off to watering it down more.

I prefer my water ice cold and play mind games with myself about drinking it. Such as I can watch tv until I drink 8 ounces or I need to drink so many ounces before noon.

NO!

Well, do you like juice? Try the V-8 Fusion or V-8Splash...you get you a fruit and/or veggie serving in one. I dont like tomato juice so i tend to favor the V-8 varieties. I had to experiment cuz I wasnt quite sure about all the flavors until i tried them. good luck.

How about iced tea? I like water, but I know when I was pregnant and nursing I got kind of sick of it. I would keep a pot of brewed decaf iced tea at home to alternate with the water.

Give coconut water a shot.

The problem with Mio and similar additives is that they contain a lot of the chemicals that soda does, stuff that your body can't process.

My daughter hates(hated) water also......but after drinking water, walking 30 minutes a day, and watching her calories, she lost all the weight and then some............... she says it was really the water that did it for her and now she has learned to love it. She went from a size 14/16 to a 6/8. I think drinking water is worth the effort!!

From what I have heard and read in the past soft drinks in general aren't great for you, diet or otherwise. The diet drinks usually contain sodium (not much but it's there) and that makes your body retain water. Also, caffeine is (again what I heard) a natural diuretic which triggers your body's response to start storing water because it's not sure when it will get actual water. Not sure I necessarily believe the double-standard in that "fact" myself. Diuretics get rid of water but "it triggers your body to store" it also?? Anyway, the acid in the drinks are bad supposed to be bad for teeth. It has been said that those who drink diet drinks weigh more. It has something to do with the body's reaction to the sweet taste and triggering compulsions to eat more and more sweets in particular. I have been told that if I am going to drink caffein and/or eat too much sodium that I need to drink more water to help flush those out of my system.

Since I have always drank water (started vigorously in 19 and 88) I cannot confirm or deny that it has helped. I started drinking 1 to 2 gallons (sometimes more) of water per day when I was stationed in Alaska with the Air Force. Alaska is a very dry area and you can become dehydrated very quickly there. As a matter of fact, I became dehydrated even drinking that much water. When I asked the doctor how that was possible he simply told me that in addition to the water I still needed to have important electrolytes (sodium and potassium). I don't eat a lot of salt and generally do not put salt on anything and only used what is suggested in recipes. I can only make two assumptions, I ate enough salt but all the water flushed it out and/or I didn't eat enough potassium.

Some people claim that soft drinks eat through your stomach. When I first started working where I do now, our water plant chemist had two steel bolts and two solutions. The two solutions were 1) Cola 2) Some acid like hydrochloric or something. Anyway, one bolt was placed in each solution and the bolt in the cola was becoming damaged far quicker than the one in the acid. Hmmmm. I believe it as it applies to steel, but I'm not convinced that it's the same for the stomach and maybe not even the teeth. I think that if I had swallowed that acid I would have been burned far worse than if I had swallowed that cola.

It just goes to show you that you can't trust everything. It's like how people play with statistics too. If I told you that you could make $100 for every "customer" you had and then told you that just yesterday I increased my own customer base by 100% you might be intrigued. But if I told you the same thing but told you that I only had 1 customer when I increased it by 100% to 2 customers you may not be as intrigued. You might not think losing 1 customer is too bad, but if I told you that I lost 50% of my customers in one day you'd flip out. Did you know that every person that ever drank a diet soda will die? Same goes for everyone that drinks water! They all will die!! If you eat 100 tons of artificial sweetener you may get cancer. If you eat a banana you may get cancer too. I have been looking and reading into statistics and the games that are played with them for quite a while and can see that while some are actually relevant, there are a lot of them out there who pick and choose how to present them based on their desired outcome. Like the customer base example.

All of that said……I don't think personally that you can replace drinking water with drinking diet or regular soda. I believe there is some truth to weight gain and diet drinks.

I regularly consume 20 - 34 cups of water every day. I start my day by literally chugging a 64oz bottle, and then from there drink from a 1000ml (about 4 cups) bottle for the remainder of the day. I rarely drink anything else. I have to force myself to drink milk to ensure that I'm getting a fair amount of vitamin D and calcium (when I was younger I used to drink nothing BUT milk though). Can't say water has an acquired taste, since it has no taste, but I can tell you from my own experience in sports, that I prefer water over sports drinks any day. Especially when it's ice cold (of course, you wanna be careful with that when you're working out so you dont wrench your gut).

Diet sodas are better than regular sodas, but that's the only thing you should be substituting them for. Part of the big reason everyone says diet sodas are so bad is that they sweet taste makes you crave more sweets. Cut the soda out (regular AND diet) and see if you notice a difference on the scale. I only use Crystal Light or now Mio, to mix it up sometimes when I'm having dinner.

I'm not sure how hard you go at it when you get your cardio in, but if you start drinking more water, you'll notice a significant difference in how you feel during and after your workout. Remember, all these things like soda and artificial stuff did not exist when mankind first came into existence. Granted, we have evolved significantly over the centuries, but there are just some things that can't be substituted. Look at the great civilizations of the world... and look where many of them got their start... on or near a major water source.

Good luck with your journey, but definitely don't use anything to substitute for water.

Think about it. Water is clean, water has no additives.

What???? Have you ever been to a water treatment plant? [Yes I have, I work in and around one] You'd be shocked at how "clean" your water is and just how many additives there are in it. Of course, they are all supposed to be okay for you to consume.