Im realizing that I’ve actually been chronically dehydrated for a good portion of my adult life and I’m looking to change that. I just don’t enjoy drinking water (as silly as that may sound).
Any advice is appreciated.
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Are you drinking water with meals? I find washing something down, even a single chip, causes you to drink more than you could by itself.
Also, keep it at hand. A refillable bottle is worth investing in. If you like it ice cold, get a vacuum insulated vessel.
I have a water bottle but I can never finish it in a day.
I think the washing down food idea is really good and im definitely going to try that going forward.
Rinse after you eat anything (or drink anything other than water) and you’ll never get cavities.
You go: “Wow, I’m an adult now and sometimes I have to do things I don’t want to do”. And then you drink the water.
The fact of the matter is that almost nobody’s favorite beverage is water, but in a display of forbearance (combined with not being too fond of the whole dehydration thing) we drink it anyway.
Additives and things can help you in the near term, but developing good habits takes time and effort (and is very often the cornerstone of good health).
eventually good habits become self re-inforcing.
I can’t drink mass market soda anymore, it’s disgustingly sweet. some of the smaller boutique sodas have way less sugar and are tasty.
does sparkling help? cucumber, slice of lemon, orangeslice?
I know a lot of people get those huge bottles and it helps them - just having it with them all the time 🤔
Generally not really… sparkling water mostly just makes me wish I was drinking normal water or just normal juice. Its kinda just the worst of both worlds.
I have gotten really into making my own juices recently like oranges and apples and yada yada but even then I dont even think I drink enough. (Plus juice is far more sugary than normal water even if its natural juices)
You could always water those juices down a bit. So a half glass of juice mixed with a half glass of water. Basically homemade (non-sparkling) Spindrift.
And it’s also worth combining the sparkling water with the juice! If the sparkling water is just making you crave it anyways. Basically instant soda. Start with 4:1 ratio or to taste and you’ll be surprised after a month or two just how little juice you have to add to the water to taste it. Getting a sodastream with little sugar free flavor squirts made a huge difference to me being able to ditch a childhood sugar addiction.
does sparkling help?
I’m craving sparkling water now. I forgot how much I liked that stuff. It’s been years
I love that shit, got one of those sparkers at home to make it with. is good shit
Haha, yes yes we’re taking over the world with Kohlensäurehaltigem Mineralwasser!
Start by adding some flavour, like slices of lemon or orange. In time you’ll start to like how hydrated you are. Just don’t put sugar into it.
cucumber is great for this
Just drink it.
Part of the problem is that I dont enjoy drinking water so its difficult to convince myself to go out of my way to do a thing I dont like doing every day. I know the answer is to drink water but like… how would one go about doing that in a way that doesnt suck?
Don’t have anything else to drink at home.
This one right here is one of the best advices. Remove all other options. You’ll either drink the water or die from dehydration.
how would one go about doing that in a way that doesnt suck?
That’s the thing, you don’t. You just do it until you’re used to it.
I lost 50lb by cutting out all sugar from my beverages, and after a few months I couldn’t even finish a can of soda because it was so disgustingly sweet.
Sugar is a highly addictive substance, so quitting it isn’t going to be easy without a health scare to motivate you.
Yep! Every food company in America has slowly been upping their sugar content in one way or another and it’s not just cause it may/may not taste better or last longer. Secret addiction runs deep with sugar. Starting with less sugar water is a great start. It is very, very hard to kick. Educate yourself and good luck!
I truly don’t understand this. Water is so refreshing and clean tasting. Did you grow up drinking lots of soda or sugary drinks?
Yeah, I did. I wasn’t raised the most healthy admittedly but I’m trying to work towards it.
In my experience tho water doesnt taste refreshing though because water doesnt taste like anything.
I see. So, if it doesn’t taste like anything, then it doesn’t taste bad, right? It just doesn’t “taste” to you. Your taste buds are probably desensitized to things that aren’t loaded in EXTREME FLAVOR!!! (sorry, was trying to evoke Brawndo vibes).
You’ve gotta just drink it. But if you’re still slurping down tepid caramelized sugar water drinks, your mileage may vary.
Good luck.
If I can scare you into drinking less acidic and sugary drinks: I was raised in a soda home. In 7th home economics class we did an assignment where we calculated the cans of soda we had on average. I thought my classmates were trolling me because they drank maybe 4 cans of soda a week while I was having around 40. I have had a lot of tooth decay later in life and had many teeth pulled. Turn around and treat it like a cigarette addiction. Some sugar in your life won’t kill you but watch out for habitual over-consumption.
it entirely depends on the qualities of the water, and temperature. My water tastes utterly uninteresting unless i cool it down to fridge temps, which makes it very tasty. Some of the best tasting water i’ve had was from an old well that was super cold and tasted like metal in a very refreshing way.
OP, are you sure you are actually dehydrated? Are you getting kidney stones?
Most people don’t need to actively concentrate on drinking liquids. Your body will tell you when you’re thirsty. It’s a weird internet fad where people try to drink like a gallon of water a day. It’s not necessary. Your body tells you when it’s hungry and it tells you when you need to drink liquids. You’re not going to die from failure of the body signaling you to eat or drink.
Now, if you’ve had kidney stones, your doctor may tell you that you need to be drinking more water.
Beyond that, excessive water drinking is just the latest fad right now. It’s not necessary.
Big Water Bottle has everyone convinced that we need to be chugging water 24/7.
Unless you live in a really hot place and work outside, or have some other risk factor (like dementia or diarrhea), thirst should be enough to keep you hydrated enough.
If you dont have additional risk factors, and you dont just exist in a constant state of thirst, I wouldn’t worry about it.
Echoing this:
Being dehydrated has real and generally unpleasant symptoms which drinking water alleviates. Dehyrdation is not just when your urine has a color.
If you have to go #1 on a regular basis, you’re probably not dehydrated.
One thing to consider is that your relationship with taste might need to be re-examined.
Human beings can go most places in the world and find food. Taste is a big part of our ability to do so as a species, sure, but the fact remains that being able to eat/drink solely to satiate your desires (rather than survival) is actually an abnormality if we compare it to the rest of human history. In a sense, it is a privilege to simply be able to say ‘no’ to something strictly based on the flavor.
Try to guage it based on how you feel rather than how it tastes. You should be able to feel the difference between how a day with only water feels vs a day without water (I’m not including beer or soda here, yes it can keep you hydrated no it is not a solution to hydration unless you’re trapped in a desert). If it’s hard for you to notice a difference, give it a week. Being regularly hydrated should effect how you feel at every part of the day, especially in the mornings.
sugar free soda is absolutely fine for hydration, the addatives just go straight through your body
I think if you look at in isolation, sure, much like beer in a survival situation. Sugar free soda is still linked with things like higher blood pressure, diabetes — which, to me, sounds like you’re just better off drinking water.
source? Because all i’ve ever seen is that sugar free soda is almost identical to water
I can find sources but for one thing, aspartame has been looked at for years as a carcinogen, 4-MEI (caramel coloring) is also a carcinogen, articles like this one point to sucralose being quite bad for you in many different ways.
If your sugar free soda contains caffeine then it can actually contribute to hydration loss, this is because caffeine is a dieuretic (something that increases urine production and removes extra salt and water from the body).
Plus the simple logic is: sugar free soda cannot be almost identical to plain water because of the sheer amount of additives. You will always be better off health-wise drinking clean water.
Tap water? If so, try filtered water, get a good, credible filter and filter the water. Depending on where you live there’s a fair amount of materials in the water that make it unpleasant.
Try adding more water to dishes you eat, have soup and put in a couple ice cubes and drink all the broth.
There’s various ways to flavour water to make it more enjoyable. Common ones are listed by Witchfire, but there’s also commercial products that may help. Just try to avoid the ones with caffeine in them.
Really, you have to probably train yourself to enjoy water. Have a piece of chocolate or something with water. Associate it with positive acts. Pavlov yourself.
Tap water? If so, try filtered water, get a good, credible filter and filter the water. Depending on where you live there’s a fair amount of materials in the water that make it unpleasant.
In a pinch, boiling it, and letting it cool back down also helps some, if they can’t afford a filter.
A different approach to the not liking water, get a good filter. I used breta filters for years but a few years back installed an under sink reverse osmosis filter because the water here is so hard that it just tastes bad whether left hard or softened. I knew water could be better because I grew up with decent water and liked it even back when I preferred pop or juice.
I wonder if anyone who claims to dislike water has only ever had subpar water. Note that I include a bunch of bottled waters in that, as I vastly prefer my RO tap water to any store bought bottled water, though some were on par with breta filtered water, though I’ve always hated the waste involved in buying bottled water (other than those big ones you can refill and stick in a water cooler, which can also be RO water if you have a good water place to get it from).
If you do go for RO, make sure the system you get has an extra stage that adds some minerals back into the water. The RO on its own actually leaves the water too pure to be safe to drink regularly, as it causes osmosis to pull nutrients out of your cells (or something like that). I’d also only suggest it in an area where water is plentiful, as it does use more water than what you get from the filter, though adding a passive pump can improve efficiency.
While the mineral issues are a concern, for most people it’s overcome with a decent diet. I’m not sure that those remineralizers do an awful lot. But I don’t leave my RO water standing eg in kettle!
Berkey water tank with a set of Doulton filters.
Hydro Homey gang.
Just drink water. You’ve ruined yourself over all these years by drinking juice/soda/Brawndo. You keep buying into the lie that “you don’t like water”.
You’ll get used to it and eventually come to want water. It’s literally what your body craves. Humans have existed for 300 millenia; mass produced sugary drinks have only existed for what, 100 years? You’ve evolved to drink water.
Just having it right there works best for me.
For me, having a large water bottle within arms reach at all times is what helped me start staying hydrated. I used to use gallons of water from the store and refill them until I felt it was time for a new one, but now I have a nice 64oz water bottle. Importantly for me, I don’t like sucking on a straw to drink water. It’s too much work and too slow. I like my water just cooler than room temperature. Having that in arms reach at all times means every time I started feeling hungry, I could drink water because I was actually thirsty and it felt the same to me.
Make it the first thing you drink when you wake up.
This is a great start. You can even fill a glass before bed so it’s waiting on your nightstand when you open your eyes, like sizzling bacon on a bedroom Foreman grill.
(This should be fine as long as you’re not immunocompromised, in which case you may need to stick to temperature-controlled water.)
I’ve started making my espresso drinks with more water for that reason. Yes, it tastes more ‘watery’ but I get more water so - win?
It’s that essentially just a cup of coffee?
. . . No. But actually yes. (Or vice versa)
I had this exact conversation with an (online) coworker. I will just feel compelled to drink cups of water, sometimes multiple in a row, and feel refreshed. They don’t exactly taste good but we’re wired to find it pleasant.
My coworker said he had to basically remember to drink water. When he’s exercising it’s more instinctual.
Well I was shocked the first time I actually met this coworker, at the Dubai office where he works from. The water there felt wrong! Apparently I was having good tasting water my whole life. I was kind of dehydrated the entire trip. Literally all the water there didn’t feel refreshing, honestly. It comes out of desalination factories, I get it, it’s still water, but it’s something to think about. I’ve appreciated my delicious Lebanese mineral water a lot more since then.
I hope this doesn’t sound out of touch, I understand most people in many countries can just drink tap water safely, and bottled is seen as a luxury and not a cheap necessity like it is here. But maybe try changing the water? All the answers here feel blasphemous to me. Cucumbers? Flavors?
As someone who lives at the other end of Asia, I can attest to tap water being undrinkable and bottled water the norm. I would also add all these comments saying “get a filter” are just setting themsleves up for problems down the road. UV flashed, RO, carbon filtered water is clean AF but has been stripped of essential trace minerals and micronutrients. In order to have efficient hydration, we need to reacquire those somewhere… so unless commenters are planning on gorging down salty snacks and chugging sports drinks behind their water, I would refer people to ConcenTrace products in order to do that. I’m not shilling for the company but I am a happy customer. There are probably other ways to go about this, but I’m not aware of them; a simple scoop or drip into my water mug is easier than sourcing various and combining them on my own.
