Tip Tuesday: “But, water is boring.”

“I hate water.”

“Water is boring.”

“Water has no flavour.”

Is this how you feel about water?

I used to. Now, for the most part, all I drink is water. When I’m thirsty, my body craves water and it’s my first go-to.

For me, switching to drinking water wasn’t a slow change. Years ago, I decided to do it cold turkey. No more pop, just water.

But what if cold turkey just doesn’t cut it for you?

Then slow changes are always best.

You may have seen water bottles with infusers in them, where you can add fruit or vegetables into a holder with holes in it, so the flavour infuses into your water. That is one way to do it, and if it works for you, great!

However, make a light smoothie also works. By blending a small amount of fruit or veggies into your water, and then slowly reducing the amount over a few weeks, you can retrain your tastebuds to love water again.

I fell in love with cucumber water (1/3 cucumber blended into about 3 cups of filtered water, adjust to taste). Or orange water (1/4 – 1/2 peeled orange, a small piece of peel for zest, and 3 cups of water, adjust to taste). You can add anything you like to water: strawberries, apples, grapes, carrots, beets, lemon and lime. Or herbs like mint. And all you need is a little bit to flavour the water. Over time, you reduce the amount of natural additive.

I recommend starting with sweet fruit like oranges and apples.

Why do we find water boring?

From a young age, we trained our bodies to crave sugary and flavoured drinks – pop, juice, chocolate milk, etc. Naturally, without these influences, our bodies would crave water. So it’s not that water is boring, it’s that we’ve trained our bodies to crave something else. It’s just a matter of resetting your thinking and working to remind your body about natural clean water. It didn’t take very long at all for me to start craving and appreciating its refreshing taste.

Extra thoughts:

In a restaurant: Paying $3/pop/coffee/tea at a restaurant really adds up on that bill. They still give water for free, ask for it with a slice of lemon, lime or orange.

Parenting tip: My boys still want pop or juice in a restaurant, so I let them as a treat, but their refills are water only. From doing this, and leading by example of always having water myself, one of my boys orders water for his drink more often then something sweet.