My doctor told me to drink LOTS of water daily, (no big shock there, huh) she even told me i could drink flavored water. I like the flavored water, hate regular water but try my hardest. However, I love iced tea. If I sweeten the iced tea with equal....would that still be considered a 'water' beverage? Would it have the same benefits as drinking regular water?

this i do not know. if i remember correctly you can count decaf sugar free/artificially sweetened tea as a water on WW but not more than 3 a day.

i'm sure someone else can tell you for sure.

have you tried regular water with a bit of lemon concentrate in it?

The rules about water have changed -- the idea that other beverages could not count towards water intake were fiction to begin with. So, any no-calorie beverage can count towards your daily intake. You want to be careful with sodium content, however -- keep an eye on that.

Having said that, though, I will say that I think it is a really important discipline to learn to drink plain water. One of the reasons so many of us became overweight is that we taught ourselves to like only things that are sweet or highly flavored, fatty, starchy, etc. To me, part of losing weight and developing a healthy lifestyle is learning to tolerate -- if not actually enjoy -- plain natural tastes. You may not "like" water, but that's a learned preference. I promise you that if you drink plain unflavored water MOST of the the time, even if it's not what you prefer right now, your tastes will change. For example, after a workout, I DON'T want anything but pure, cold, refreshing, crisp, clear water, and there are plenty of times where I honestly feel my thirst is quenched BETTER by plain water than it could be by a flavored beverage.

I would say that iced tea would be the anti water Tea is a diuretic so instead of hydrating you, it takes water away from you. You would have to drink extra water to account for any tea/iced tea that you are drinking.

How about iced water? Maybe some iced water with lemon?

Actually the amount of fluid that is excreted due to the diuretics in tea and coffee is minimal. Another myth! Really if the choice was between drinking iced tea and not drinking water at all then I think it is preferable to drink the iced tea.

I know a lot of people are hung up on the diuretic effect of tea and coffee but as a RN I have given people medication to diurese them (make them go pee) and not had them give off more than a pint or 2 at the most. So if that is how much a medication designed to make you urinate does than what you get in a couple of cups of tea or coffee isn't going to be enough to counter how much you are drinking. In my opinion the problem behind tea and coffee is not what you might pee out but how many calories you are adding with sugar, milk or cream or other flavourings.

Hmm, well thats all food for thought.. I've never counted anything flavoured as a water... I almost feel like I'm cheating.. Although, lately I've been having trouble getting my water in so this would be a fantastic idea to help me get through it. I'm going to try the lemon/ice soon and maybe I can switch to that in the evenings instead of Diet Pop.

As I recall, WW says it can't be caffienated.

Again I think WW is buying into the myth that the caffeine in coffee and tea produces large amounts of urination. If you were drinking huge amounts then I might agree but a cup or so isn't going to cause you to lose that much fluid. I did a yahoo search on caffeine and while most of the sites talk about caffeine as a diuretic there are also some sites that say it is a mild diuretic only and that it isn't going to cause more fluid to be lost than what you are drinking. So again in my personal experience giving diuretics at the hospital I know you won't lose gallons of water because of drinking a couple of cups of coffee or tea. I find that it doesn't matter what I drink, if I drink more than what I usually do, I will go to the bathroom more.

Well, thanks for everyones opinions. I have been trying to drink more regular ol' water...and i can tolerate it for a little while. But I'm still on this tea kick. I'll ask my doctor when I go back and see what she says. I'll post back more after that. thanks!

Throw slices of lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit, whatever into the water to jazz it up.

My nephrologist (kidney dr) says tea counts as water intake. He said if I'm going to drink 2 cups of tea in the am's that I can't have more than 2 liters of water per day.

Well, guys and girls, I asked my doctor about the tea thing. And she said as long as it is decaffeinated, I am allowed as much as I want. she said it is just basically a colored water. This is just my doctors opinion....yours could be different. have a nice evening!