I Prefer to Eat My Water Thank You Very Much

I like my chips and I don’t drink enough water. There, I’ve said it.

God knows (as does my wife) that I am far from perfect. Like most, I often struggle with making the right choices all the time with my diet. I’m not going to defend my love of potato chips and other salty snacks, but I have something to say about my apparent lack of hydration.

Eight glasses of water a day. That seems to be the standard recommended amount of water we all think we need, so if one does not guzzle 8 before bedtime they imagine that they must be dehydrated.

I don’t believe I have ever had 8 glasses of water in a single day. I do remember the few times that I had tried to drink more water than I normally would. I have carried a 2 litre bottle of water attempting to finish it by day’s end. I’ve downloaded a “hydration app” for my phone which reminds me to down a glass of water every 90 minutes. The end result was having to run to the bathroom too many times to count and not getting through a whole night due to multiple visits to the latrine. I gave up trying to push more fluids in favour of an uninterrupted night’s sleep. While giving into the fact that I am just not a water drinker, I imagined that I would succumb to being in a constant state of dehydration. I imagined a life filled with dry and wrinkly skin, muscle cramps, dark urine, headaches, dizziness, confusion, fatigue and dry mouth. The thing is, I rarely suffer from any of these common symptoms of dehydration. I don’t feel thirsty very often but when I do, I drink about half a glass of water and the thirst is gone. So am I hydrated enough even though I don’t drink the recommend 8 glasses of water daily or is it possible that I don’t need 8 glasses of water daily? I suspect that we all need the recommended daily amount of water, but it probably doesn’t have to always be in the form of water on its own.

When I assess my diet, I see that I eat a lot of foods with a high water content. I realize that I get most of my water through the foods that I take in. I enjoy many apples a day, I eat plenty of green leafy vegetables and other fruits and vegetables that hold a lot of water. Foods like cucumbers, celery, carrots, broccoli, watermelon, strawberries and cauliflower are just a few examples of edibles having water content well over 90 percent.

So if you are like me, not drinking the requisite 8 glasses per day, stop feeling guilty and rest assured that as long as your food is filled with water, then so are you.