Water Only Challenge November

[KetoType2]

Beginning Day 10, water only, no coffee, no tea, no flavored water, no artificial sweeteners, no diet sodas…just plain, pure water.
Saliva production in my mouth has increased quite noticeably. I think this is a reversal of possible dry mouth side effect of aspartame used in the 2-4 (sometimes more), 12 oz. diet sodas that was my habit to drink each afternoon.
Saliva is important to your mouth and teeth health. Perhaps this is a good thing.

[Fangs]

it’s what a beagle does.
P.S. I could not have gone the distance before Keto. But their was lots of water in the ground puddles for me.

Loved loved loved your post KT!

Controlling a beagle on point is like herding cats

Best thing is your dogs proved something to you…that last line, something you could not have done before, ya kept up with hunting beagles all the way! Fantastic!!

Plus that feeling, oh yea, when one of my horses would get out of pasture it was that sinking feeling of dead horse in road or ?? til I was always smart enough to remember thru that panic, get the feed bucket…score, back in pasture fast LOL

@robintemplin
omg too funny. we got a small Papillion and you say SQUIRREL or groundhog and he goes ape…too funny

OK back to water and how everyone is doing on their water challenge!
Hope all is going great for everyone, but with that darn Thanksgiving coming at us as a holiday for many? hope ya’ll got your plans in force to not partake Rock it on!! Sorry for chat derailment We are quite the chatty bunch Great people here and great stories, I love it!

[Shinita]

I saw lots of deers this year but today, today I saw wild boars!!! Yay! Just because there are many around here, I never saw them as I am out during the day and they usually not. But there is one place where I have chances in the autumn and now it happened I love pigs.

I kind of decided to forgo all of my dietary rules until Christmas, I just do whatever, only focus on OMAD (that I totally don’t do, again but it seems to come back to me). I trained myself for so long, now it’s time to see what happens when I just do whatever.

I took some break when my tap water got cloudy (it happens), I seemed to get bored of it too, maybe… I even had a coffee day when I opened a small box of cream… But only one. The water got clear again and I went back to it. I think I am changing without anything forceful.

[KetoType2]

I think that I will quit artificial sweeteners for good, including diet soda:
Artificial Sweeteners, Your Worst Enemy

[robintemplin]

I love pigs too!
I’ll be anxious to hear your report after December.

[Shinita]

But it’s only about aspartame and sucralose, two things I avoid like the plague as they taste utterly awful to me even in the tiniest amount…
Sugar alcohols can be find in nature as far as I know and I have no problem with them - except they aren’t food, per se so I definitely don’t go out of my way to eat them… But my high-carber SO with a huge sweet tooth eats them every day just like natural sugars (as natural as a modern fruit can be). It seems to work for him so I don’t worry about him either.

I drink various liquids now but mostly water. It’s so great coffee doesn’t even cross my mind until I get a headache or reach my first meal… I just wake up and drink water without thinking. I like when things changes this quickly even without trying hard or going cold turkey… Thanks, people. I never managed to bring down my coffee consumption this much… Surely my changing views and habits have a factor but without this challenge and some thinking I did because of it, I still would drink too much coffee despite not liking coffee as much as in the past anymore (since I refused putting a tiny cream into my coffee almost all the time).

[KetoType2]

I suppose, like Erythritol, is a sugar alcohol, occurs in nature, but man has industrialized the process…that’s what scares me. Like processed foods, our processing is what turns a good thing into a bad thing.

[Fangs]

could not agree more.
that aspartame crap I drank in my diet pepsi murdered me…with massive heart PVCs going bonkers and put me thru a ‘real deal heart issue’ when it was the damn crap food I was drinking like this crap. Once I dropped my addiction to it, and yes I drank a ton of it LOL I improved damn near overnight…so…any soda, diet soda, and all that fake sweetener crap to me is evil!

[KetoType2]

Day 12: Water only…feeling really good! I am giving away (forever) my office stash of diet sodas.

[robintemplin]

Ah, sweet carbonated poison.

[KetoType2]

Day 15 of 30, only plain water to drink, it’s downhill from here. I have no cravings for sweet drinks. I no longer need ice…for cold sodas, or even cold water. Room temperature water is just fine.
I believe my total liquid intake is less too, likely because of not ingesting caffeine and toxins from artificial sweeteners.
I am mulling over whether to resume morning coffee in 15 days, I’m not sure that I need the stimulant anymore, maybe I’ll put the money I save from $8/pound coffee into my Bora Bora vacation fund.

[Fangs]

KT you are doing super fantastic!

You took on something you have been thinking about and made it happen and darn if ya aren’t succeeding in full force! Super congrats!

Money on junk like diet soda or whatrever drink crap is money spent on fine food ya love to eat Plus if you do real good on that extra, maybe a fine vacation to be had thru savings on wasting bucks on drink junk!

So happy for you! Rock it forward, new you emerging

[robintemplin]

I am so curious. I was going to try this challenge… but I didn’t make it one day. I only drink decaf. But with stevia and heavy whipping cream. So I look at it as my one sweet heavenly treat. It’s truly the only remaining thing I can think of that I could eliminate from my diet. But…. Doesn’t mean I should, right?
So… back to my curiosity. Before you managed to live without it for lo these 15 days, were you in love with your coffee? Was caffeine involved? Is your life better or hopelessly dreary? Let me know after your trial separation.

[Digital_Dave]

Yep, half way through and all’s good. For me, as I mentioned, I usually only drink water whilst Hunting since I don’t like to have anything that can add smells to the Hunt. So I drink water whenever I plan on being in the woods. So it hasn’t been much of a different in that aspect, but I also can’t say for sure, but I do feel the days I haven’t Hunted, I may have drank less than I do when I consume Tea, a Zevia, etc.? Can’t say for sure, and maybe this would have shown more if not for being a time I’m usually hunting?

As for drinking more, this is probably mostly due to Iced Tea itself. When I’m working inside of outside of the house, I have always had the tendency to drink quite a bit when I come in from the heat. And this is mostly with Tea. - Always found it to be refreshing, but can overdo it at times as well. With the water, not as much, though I can overdo with that too. But with this challenge, I haven’t been, as the stats I’ve been keeping show below. I’m still under what I would normally drink, and think when drinking some of those other things, I’m also drinking the water as well. So though I haven’t craved any sweet drinks, I do still miss the flavor change I get with Iced Tea, Zevia’s or Almond Milk, which I drink without sweeteners.

So I do miss variety of the drinks itself, but have never been one for strictly needing something sweet.

[KetoType2]

I have always drank coffee in the morning, I can’t say that I really enjoy it, it just seems I am accustom to needing that caffeine boost. Perhaps, I just needed to be off it for a bit to realize my addiction to the caffeine.
And, my life is still hopelessly dreary. Thanks for asking.

[Shinita]

I definitely won’t add back coffee in the morning or in the evening and at night. Though I usually drink a lot of water at night and little coffee. That’s my big drinking time.
I like this “coffee only with my afternoon meal” thing but I don’t actually need coffee there, I just use it for headache or food nowadays. I am not sure it’s good for me to drink my calories even on OMAD… Seems more effective and feels better if I just eat it but it’s not always easy for me to eat my 10th or 12th egg of the meal without tricks and a coffee may be better than sweets (though I see no big problems with either, I just want to lose my shackles)… And eating meat doesn’t always solve this, I get bored of meat easily so must fall back to eating eggs.
Still, having coffee for the sake of eating eggs only, it sounds not good enough. But I have a headache every day lately… So I still had zero water only days I just have water only fasts but a meal somehow always brought a coffee or 2 or 4 too.
I try to do it better from now on Water only until 5pm was so easy today (still a fan of hot water), I need a bigger challenge now.
I focus on no coffee so some carbonated water at night when I feel only that is good for my big thirst is fine for me.

[Digital_Dave]

Well, coming up on this last week of this Water Only challenge, and it’s been ok overall to be honest, with no issues that I’m aware of. But though I don’t crave any sweet things anyway (including drinks) I can say that I do still miss the variety when it comes to drinks. Again, doesn’t have to be something on the sweet side, but just different. I do like variety, with this being mostly Iced Tea, Almond Milk, etc.

But November was also probably the worst month of the year I could have actually done this, being I do restrict my liquid intake quite a bit more whilst hunting. - So it definitely won’t show my normal intake on liquids daily or a regular bases, being I pretty much don’t drink liquids during or before the hunt.

But even though my intake was somewhat restricted during this, I’m still of the thinking I may drink less overall when I’m consuming just water. … My main thought on this is that I do tend to drink quite a bit of Tea, and as my Wife reminds me regularly, a pitcher doesn’t last very long and we seem to always be making more and more constantly. And I drink it both with or without sweetener, so it’s not the fact it’s the sweetener that causes this, but maybe the flavoring? … Either way, I might actually keep tracking intake of fluids daily for a little bit, just to see what it comes out to. (Though I won’t be using this month as a base model, since it was limited by activities that I enjoy this time of year.)

[KetoType2]

Similar here, I am missing the variety of different liquids, like coffee and tea. I have been drinking more like eating, meaning I drink my fill at 3-4 intervals over the day, i.e. I am not grazing on liquids all day,
Iike when I was doing the sweet stuff.
I will likely go back to some morning coffee and afternoon tea, unsweetened of course.
I have discovered that I can do without diet soda or other artificially sweetened drinks. That is my takeaway, no more artificial sweeteners in either food or drink. I think my body will thank me.

[Shinita]

I had… Circumstances. Very special ones and I usually just mess up all my dietary rules at once. And I got a very very good coffee as gift (tea too) It’s even TASTY as a black coffee, I am not used to that! But other things pointed into the coffee direction as well, fortunately I lost my daily headaches so not that. So I went back to multiple coffees/tees a few days ago, hopefully it’s very temporal. Before the last days, only water outside of my eating window worked well and easily, I suppose it won’t be hard to go back to that. That’s my plan for the future most of the time.
Even in the last days I continued to drink hot water too, it’s definitely a plus, realizing it works for me so the desire of a warm liquid shouldn’t mean something else than water.

I disliked sweetened drinks anyway (with very few exceptions. sometimes I get nostalgic towards sweetened tea with lemon but I need to buy some very boring, neutral tea for that as proper, flavorful tea is horrible with something added. except certain strong acidic teas vs a drop of milk but I never drink strong tea) so no change there.
Though I must say I will keep drinking the liquid from canned fruits with carbonated water (we don’t use water when we can our fruits so it’s typically very little but super flavorful. and extremely sweet, okay, it depends but we have very many extremely sweet fruits, hence the carbonated water). I use the liquid from canned carrots too but I usually put it into my egg milk, it gets super sweet! I look at carrots and see sugar since many years but it still was surprising how very sugary is it. I think the liquid has more sugar than the whole thing and it’s probably true.

Another thing I realized this month that I have so very many non-water liquids, not just tea and coffee (and sometimes cocoa). Some are used very occasionally but I won’t give them up.

I have no idea how much I drink as I can’t measure that but it’s always enough

[gingersmommy]

Who’s with me on a water only challenge for one month?
Only water to drink. No coffee, tea, or artificial sweeteners. Just water in November. You can eat food, but just water to drink.

I’m late seeing this. Looking forward to reading what everyone has contributed.

Oh, man - I don’t know if I can do this! What a fabulous, proposition, however! Of course, I wish (!), however, for me, that is a huge ask! I love HWC and artificial sweetener in my coffee (two morning, two evening - truth be told, the additives are probably the main reason why I drink it, other than a caffeine dependence), and one diet pop a day, sometimes a glass of whiskey and water in the afternoon.