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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Why do you think you’re chronically dehydrated? Is your urine brown? Have you been fainting? Do you have kidney stones? (I don’t actually want to know - please don’t share your personal health information on the internet - but if the answer to any of those questions is yes please see a doctor.) Otherwise if the answer to those questions is “no” you are likely getting more then enough hydration. It’s a myth that we need 8 glasses of water a day or need to be constantly drinking water to be “hydrated.” Just keep your water of choice available and drink when you are thirsty. You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) force yourself to drink beyond that. Our bodies are really good at self regulation and forcing more fluid into our system just equates to extra unnecessary trips to the bathroom. You don’t need to force yourself to “like” water. If it’s the only thing you have on hand to drink you’ll drink it when you get thirsty.
Get a big insulated metal jug 1 liter or more, keep it in arms reach when sitting around or wherever convenient for where you spend time. Get a second one for work. Make it a goal to empty it at least once, preferably twice a day. Can’t stay hydrated when the water is in a different room. Water next to the bed beacuse that shit hits different at 3am.
Store any liquor, pop, beer, etc in an inconvenient location so the water is always the lazy and low effort option. No mini-fridge at the gaming setup. Your taste will adjust over a few weeks.
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.
Cool (not cold), with no ice. Filtered.
Eat savory snacks.
Keep the water in an open-top container so you can gulp rather than being limited by a straw.
what about fizzy water (get a water fizzing device) or hot/warm water or filtered water ?
Flavoured hydration powders are a solid option, as long as you’re avoiding chemical sweeteners.
The trick is to make them at half the recommended strength by putting the recommended amount into double the volume of water, which will also stop you from giving yourself kidney stones by overloading you with minerals
what does “chemical sweeteners” mean?
Things like Acesulfame K, Aspartame, Steviol/Stevia extracts, I called them chemical sweeteners where it would be more accurate to call them artifical sweeteners.
It’s entirely anecdotal, but all of these leave a horrendous taste that overpowers the intended flavours in my opinion.
Sucralose is probably the only one that works as intended (massive sweetness to replace sugars at a fraction of the volume)
right but… that’s just a matter of personal taste, why would you tell others to avoid artificial sweeteners? Many people don’t even notice a difference in taste.
Well aspartame seems to increase your chances at getting cancer(with high use, supposedly)
no, that’s not what the research showed. The research showed that it barely even increases the risk of cancer if you inject absurd amounts of it into rats.
It’s one of the safest food additives we’ve ever studied.
I don’t drink soda and stuff and carry a water bottle on me all times
I went for white tea and soda stream
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
