I bought some green tea crystal light for metabalism today to add to my water. Not sure if I should count this toward my water goal or if I should still be drinking 8 glasses without anything in addition to the tea each day?

Does anyone have thoughts on this?

THanks!

I think you're fine counting this toward your water goal.

I use crystal light sparingly each day and count it towards my water...

My trainer told me that I couldn't count it as water and that your body needs plain old water with nothing in it in order to work properly.

I don't know how much I believe that though... Crystal light is barely any calories and so delicious.

I decided to drink the crystal light in the morning to boost my energy and then plan water the rest of the day, still a minimum of 8 glasses...will see if I float away from all the liquid-lol.

It's a pretty common myth, and a very trainery thing to say, that the 8, 8oz glasses of water a day have to be plain water.

It's simply not true. You could literally eat enough whole, juicy fruits in a day so that you didn't have to drink fluids at all. (It would be a lot of fruit, but the point still applies.) Your body doesn't have any more trouble separating H2O from Crystal Light than it does parsing out the vitamins, fats, proteins, etc... in the food you eat. It's not like you won't be hydrated by Crystal Light. In fact, you could drink enough Coca-Cola to hydrate yourself without ever touching plain water. You might need an extra cup or so to deal with the slight diuretic effect of the caffeine...but still.

Nibbles - busting diet myths.

Hoooooray!!!!! I 2nd this!

I would count crystal light as water. In my worst diet coke addicted days, I rarely drank anything other than coffee with milk or diet coke. I was not dehydrated.

I don't drink crystal light, diet coke, or other drinks with artificial sweeteners very often anymore, more because of health and dental concerns than anything else. Liquid is liquid, unless it contains so much salt that it leaches water from your cells. Unless you're drinking only sea water (or only canned soups) this is unlikely to be a problem. Electrolyte solutions actually rehydrate better than plain water anyway. I still drink mostly plain water, sometimes with a slice of lemon to motivate me to drink more. And 3 mugs of coffee with milk in the morning; I'm not giving up coffee and yes, it's still liquid.

That's right. I only rarely drink plain water -- perhaps a half cup every two weeks. I get all my fluid needs met with coffee, tea, juice and soup. If the plain water myth were true I would have shrivelled up into a prune by now. My mother literally never drank plain water and lived a long and healthy life.

F.

Crystal Light has unnecessary chemicals that aren't good for us, but I still drink a ton of it anyway. You can totally include it as part of your water intake. I find that I drink a lot kore fluid when I drink crystal light - I never remember to drink plain tap water, but Crystal Light is tasty enough that I will happily drink a lot of it.

How does adding powder to water make it magically not water anymore?

My mother was hospitalized for water intoxication (also called water poisoning, or water overdose), because she believed the water myths told to her by her Weight Watcher's leader (my understanding is that only some of the myths were supported by WW officially at the time) that half of her water intake had to be "plain water," that "caffeinated beverages don't count and in fact need to be compensated for with additional water," and that a person needs a half ounce of water (in addition to that found in food) for every pound of body weight (that is that larger people need far more water than smaller people.

If my father had not taken her to the emergency room, she probably would have had a fatal heart attack that night (or so we've been told). As it is, she spent more than a week (8 or 9 days) in the hospital as they tried to get her electrolyte levels in a safe range.

As a result of the water intoxication, her kidneys were permanently damaged. The kidney specialist called in told us that it was once rare for even kidney specialists to have even one case of water intoxication in a career, and now he sees many cases every year - and in fact, even general practitioners are becoming familiar with it - largely because of the water myths associated with dieting for health and weight loss. Large amounts of fluids (of any kind) combined with a very low-sodium diet, and regular exercise can be dangerous, even for healthy, young people - but for older people on even low doses of blood pressure medication (as my mother was) the risk is that much greater.

He told us that 1/2 ounce of water per lb of body weight works out ok for a normal weight person - but larger people don't necessarily need more water (at least not much more) than thinner folks, because a 300 lb person does not have twice the kidney capacity as a 150 lb person - so does not need twice the water.

He also said that caffeinated and even many alcoholic beverages (like beer and wine) contribute more water than they take away. It's why in the middle-ages, everyone drank beer and wine - because it wasn't safe to drink the water. Children (and adults for that matter) often drank "soft" beers and ales (boiled but not aged long enough to ferment/produce alcohol).

Every year the water myths seem to get more and more extreme. If they continue at this rate, it won't be long before there are people claiming that we all need four to five gallons of "pure" water.

If our water couldn't have "stuff" disolved in it, we'd have to drink distilled water (the only "pure" water), and drinking large amounts of distilled water can leach minerals from your bones.

Our bodies have no problem whatsoever, using the water in foods and beverages (even caffeinated beverages) so the "no stuff" rule is silly.

Also, while diet soft drinks get a bad rap for containing unhealthy chemicals, the image is much worse than the reality. There are far more dangerous, numerous, and concentrated sources of hazardous and toxic chemicals used in every day life. People are often unaware of their dangers because they assume that if they're not drinking the stuff, it's not dangerous (a false assumption). If you wear makeup, or use normal household cleaners, laundry detergents, fabric softeners, shampoos, air fresheners... you are exposing yourself to far more dangerous chemicals in much higher concentrations.

I've chosen to give up as many of the environmental toxins and carcinogens as I can, and don't worry about diet sodas. My mother-in-law thinks my house must be filthy (filled with all sorts of dangerous, but invisible germs) because I don't use chemical cleaners and germ-killers. I've found that mild soap and water is the only cleaner you need, if you clean regularly. I do use a little bit of bleach when absolutely necessary, but the bleach container I have is over three years old, showing how rarely I use it.

I wish I could convince hubby that we don't need an air freshener for the bathroom (at least I convinced him that we don't need one in every room of the apartment).

Kaplods!!

Do this - http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-...shener-Refill/

I refilled all my Bath and Body Works air freshners with essential oils! The kids have a lavender oil filled one by their bed. It smells like sleep in there .

Yay I finally had an amazing tip to share with you (instead of the other way around)

Thanks! I'll pass it on to hubster to try (he's the "cleaning dude" in our house). We share the laundry and some of the kitchen chores, but he does the most actual cleaning, because of my COPD/asthma/lung-scarring autoimmune disease. My lungs are getting stronger, but hubby still wants to do all the chores that could aggravate my lungs "just in case."

The solid air freshener was his only hold-out, because the bathroom is where the kitty litter pan is.

We've tried some of the health-food store brands of air freshener, but we haven't tried essential oils. Sounds like a good option.

I would totally count Crystal Light added to water as part of your water intake.