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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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.
what about fizzy water (get a water fizzing device) or hot/warm water or filtered water ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
is this a “how to eat an elephant” type of question? (one bite at a time)
Have you tried various sources of water? I can usually taste the difference between various bottled waters, let alone tap water from different places. Maybe you don’t like the local tap water.
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.)
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.
I don’t drink soda and stuff and carry a water bottle on me all times
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.
Water tastes better with a few grains of salt or a slice of lemon in it (it’s got what plants crave)
