Eight Glasses Of Water Daily - Is It Possible To Drink That Much?

by Kathi
(Pennsylvania)

It does not matter where you turn - every sports/health magazine, the television, any news feed, whether on the radio or internet, book after book, your school, the doctor, nurse or dietitian, plus a few other places in between: they all recommend the same 6 to 8 glasses of water each and every day. And here you are thinking “I Hate Water.”

Many people tell themselves I don’t drink water but I do have a few cups of coffee, tea or soda everyday. Each of these are made with water so I do OK. But the reality, none of these three count towards your daily water requirements.

Are you now asking, “Why, that seems so unfair!”

Each of these three all lead to other nutritional difficulties. Coffee and tea are known as diuretics. This group of compounds robs your body of fluids, thus leading towards dehydration. All of this time you thought you were giving your body beneficial liquids while all you are doing is burning it all plus more away.

Soda with all of its natural sweeteners leads to a lifetime of cavities, calories or obesity from an accumulation of useless nutritional ingredients. Artificial sweeteners then is the downfall of the sugar free variety. These are a nutritional time bomb filled with chemically derived ingredients which can generate a host of future degenerative diseases in the human body. Fewer in calories, sure, but would you prefer the possibility of cancer instead?

Somehow you have been trapped in the middle of your desire to be healthy pitted against your inability to swallow that much liquid all in the same day.

For the select few people that willingly do ingest an assortment of fruits and vegetables every day, the daily quota has just become so much easier. This is because by weight, many fruits and vegetables contain up to 90% water. Adding a few of these to your daily diet therefore actually contributes to your daily intake.

Check this list below and get in the habit of adding a few of these selections to your meals and snacks every day.

• zucchini when eaten raw is up to 95% water when used in salads.
  
  
• cucumbers are 96% water when raw
  
  
• fresh salad greens - spinach and iceberg lettuce especially are greater than 91% water
  
  
• many raw salad ingredients are also high water content offerings. Tomatoes (up to 94%), carrots (87%), radishes (95%), sweet peppers (91%) and raw cabbage (92%) all contain appreciable contents of water.
  
  
• fruit selections which have favorable water contents include watermelon (93%), strawberries (92%), grapefruit (91%), cantaloupe (90%), peaches (89%), raspberries and pineapples (87%), apricots (86%) and blueberries (85%)
  

So although downing that water daily is still an important part of a daily health maintenance program, who says you can’t enjoy a little variety every day and get a large portion of those needed liquids just in the foods you eat daily instead.

Remember though, raw is ideal because the heat from cooking also dehydrates the water from the fruit/vegetable itself. So telling yourself that slice of pizza is adding to your daily water nutritional content is really not helping you any at all.