How Much Water Should I Drink

How much water should we be drinking in a day?

Personally I like to use the ‘am I thirsty’ technique when determining when and how much to water to drink. If I’m thirsty I drink, if not I don’t.

I trust my body to know what it’s doing and send me the signals that I need fluids, but how much water are you supposed to drink?

How much water you should drink depends on different factors for each and everyone of us.
* Your height,
* Age,
* The food you eat,
* The temperature,
* Illness, and
* How much exercise you are doing
all have a factor in how much water you need to drink in a day.

The European Food Safety Authority recommends that women drink 1.6 liters of fluid and men should drink about 2.0 liters of fluid per day. That’s about eight 200ml glasses for a woman and 10 200ml glasses for a man,

but should we be aiming for some arbitrary number of glasses of water in a day

How Much Water Should I Drink

Drinking Water – Does It Have To Be Water?

Drinking water isn’t the only way to get your recommended daily intake of fluids. It’s important to know we get some water from the food we eat in a day and counts towards the amount of water we need to drink to stay healthy. 70% of your food is water, but the vast majority of the water we need comes from drinks directly.

All drinks count including hot drinks such as tea and coffee, but water, milk and fruit juices are the healthiest way to get fluid into the body with water being the healthiest way since it has zero calories and contains no other preservatives, sugars or additives to interfere with the process of keeping fluid in the bodies system.

All drinks are water based they do count just as much as drinking nothing but water, which I for one am relieve about since I don’t really like plain water.

It is best to avoid alcoholic drinks as alcohol is a strong diuretic and makes you pass more water and can lead to dehydration in the right conditions. A cold beer on a hot day might sound heavenly, but it can make you more thirsty and in hot weather drinking alcohol can put you at more risk of suffering from dehydration. Tea and coffee are also a diuretic, but the effects are so low that drinking tea or coffee to quench a thirst is fine. It takes drinking a lot of coffee and tea for it to be a problem more than what most people drink in a day.

Zero Calorie Heaven

With water having zero calories it’s one of the best things to drink and there is no disputing drinking water is good for you.

If you are on a diet sugary drinks like soft and fizzy drinks that are high in added sugars are not the best way to quench a thirst especially for children. These high sugary drinks are high in calories and bad for teeth. High sugar content drinks and foods are not good for anyone on a daily basis especially children.

8 Glasses Of Water A Day – Why, I Don’t Mind If I Do

The eight 200ml glasses of water a day seems to be a myth. This is why I use the ‘am I thirsty’ rule rather than aiming for a specific number of glasses of water. My body has evolved over millions of years and is efficient to tell me when I need to drink. I’m not old or suffering from any illnesses so my body is the best regulator to know when and how much to drink.

Before the idea of 8 glasses of water a day took hold in societies psyche, we all managed to survive and thrive, yet the 8 glasses of water a day seems to have stuck.

8 glasses of water a day is a guild line not an exact science. Will drinking the equivalent of 8 200ml glasses of fluids a day do you any harm, no probably not.

Some people function better with more water than usual, other can survive on less. Know one seems to know where the concept of drinking 8 glass of water a day originally came from and there is numerous amounts of advice on-line contradicting exactly how much water we should drink. Every health agency, health professional, and country have a different guideline.

Water Facts, Look at your Pee Pee

An interesting water fact – looking at the colour of your urine can tell you if your not drinking enough fluids in a day.

The darker your pee is the more at risk you are of dehydrations, the lighter it is the more water you have in your body. Dark yellow or dark orange and you might not be drinking enough. light yellow and your levels are fine.

Pee Chart Infographic Drinking Water

somethings can naturally colour your pee, vitamin b12 can colour the pee dark yellow and eating a lot of beetroot or blueberries in your diet can colour urine reddish.

Having straw colour pee or light yellow means your healthy, it’s not so good if your urine is as clear as the day is long. If it is always clear you might be drinking to much water and may need to cut back.

If you have any concerns you should consult a doctor, colour and smell have been used as an indicator of health for generations and is still used today. Any change to your pee like smell, colour and consistency as well has how often you are going or not going to the toilet, having excessive thirst or not being thirsty at all, pain or discomfort when passing urine could mean you have an underline health problem and you should consult your GP.

How Much Water Should I Drink

So after all this, how much water should you drink? however much you need, the truth is no one can exactly tell you how much you need as an individual the best course of action is to listen to your body.

I know it’s not very precise, but the myth of drinking 8 glasses of water a day isn’t very helpful either. Everyone is different, their needs are different and everyone needs a different amount of fluids in a day.

Following these simple rules should be sufficient for the vast majority of people