Water

I'm not sure how you trick yourself. If you're suffering from dehydration and your normal biological cues aren't having you drink, set an alarm on your phone if you one and it has that feature.

I drink herbal tea or water out of habit. I feel thirsty after activity, or, if I feel a bit allergy rddn, it's often improved by a big drink. You learn to recognise when you need it.

Soda tastes crap to me (unless it's diet coke with a big slug of rum) and more than one or two doses of caffeine make me feel ill and bugger up my sleep. Neither are hard to avoid once they're no longer a habit.

I bought several water bottles that I really like. They are super cute (important to me), spill-resistant, and have straws (I like that). At any given time, there are two in the fridge getting cold, and one beside me. When I finish one, I immediately "rinse, refill, refrigerate" and get a new one. (Actually, I'm a liar. Most of the time I totally make my kids do it for me. LOL!) Because it's always sitting beside me, I drink it without even thinking about it. Being cold really matters to me, too. I hate room temperature water. If I don't finish a bottle before it gets warm, I will replace it with a cold one rather than drink it. (That's why I don't just have 2 in rotation. If I drink one quickly, it's important there's a cold one to replace it!)

Sometimes I add those individual flavor packets to my water. Be careful with those, they totally lie about the calories. The ones I like say 5 calories, but the "serving size" is 1/2 a packet! Even though they are obviously single-use. I also drink as much unsweetened ice tea and diet soda as I want. Yes, those contain water, and they are 0 calories. And I drink one cup of coffee every day (but I use milk and sugar, so I log that). Nothing wrong with that if it fits your calories!

Also meant to add that I used to drink La Croix flavored seltzers when I first quit soda because I was addicted to fizzy drinks! The coconut one is great.

Pop drinkers: does anyone use the Sodastream? I bought one eons ago when they first came out, then a few years ago, bought another.

My favorite: orange pop I make, so I don't have to deal with Red 40, and it's made with real orange.
Another favorite pop from my Sodastream: made using frozen cranberry juice.

Plant Nanny!

I've hit a stage in my life where I only like drinking water if it's hot. Warm is minimally acceptable. No lemon or other citrus. Just hot water, thanks.

Since I grew up in a household where water was the default beverage (along with sugarless sun brewed Lipton iced tea and whole milk), I've personally never found the tasteless liquid unpalatable.

As far as encouraging myself? If needed, I break out the 16 oz Nalgene + a reusable straw. I'll keep it in front of me constantly and refill it as soon as it's empty. I average around 96 oz of water a day when I do this, not counting any 11 oz cups of hot tea I brew in a day (1-4).

I drink it when I'm hungry in place of eating.

kbmh611 wrote: »

I'm surprised on here how many people advocate drinking diet soda over water sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I drink a lot of diet soda, but I've never had a doctor or dietician say drinking diet soda was better or just as good as drinking water. In fact they say the opposite. When I tell a doctor how much diet soda I drink and how little water I consume I immediately get the talk of how bad diet soda is and that I need to drink more water.

I certainly don't advocate it, but I also don't think diet soda is nearly as bad as "they" claim it to be. At least not for me. I tend to drink between a half gallon and gallon of it per day, and have done so for most of a couple decades, ever since I learned I had diabetes. Before that, it was regular Pepsi, which I'm pretty sure contributed to the diabetes. If diet soda was so godawful, I should be dead by now.

I also read this in magazines and in talking to people who have "experted" weight loss and healthy living. So why do people on here think they know better than the experts?

Because often the "experts" are quacks like Dr. Oz or Dr. Mercola (can of worms explosion in 3...2...1...) Or they are just plain full of it.

As a diabetic, I'm controlling my blood sugar with a calorie limited, low-carb diet (and the weight loss helps too). I am on a couple oral meds, but I really think they don't do much of anything and am working to get off them. In fact, I got back on the diet and weight loss thing (done it before) because my blood sugar insisted on staying too high and other metabolic markers were starting to follow suit, and the pills just weren't having any significant effect.
Anyway, the point of all the above is that I am controlling my blood sugar with a dietary model that is -not- recommended by the "experts". In fact, had I been following American Diabetic Association guidelines for the last couple decades, I would be fully dependent on insulin by now, because their standards assume medication dependence and that insulin use and heart disease are inevitable.

So no, there are very good reasons why people don't buy what the "experts" are selling.