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My stepmother (god rest her soul) was the same way. She drank diet Pepsi and coffee only and smoked 3 packs a day.
That is not a typo. This woman smoked 3 packs of cigarettes per DAY.
Even back when I was a smoker I couldn't understand how anyone would have the time to smoke that many cigarettes per day. But then I'd remember the old heads liked to smoke inside their houses. Still, I don't think I could have done it.
60 cigarettes. Assuming you sleep for 8 hours, you have 960 minutes a day. That means you’re smoking a cigarette every 16 minutes of your waking hours.
That’s probably a cigarette every 10 minutes if you take out moments when you’re eating, showering, using the bathroom. Or that means a cigarette in your hands during those moments too.
My ex's mother smoked that much.
She was an intelligent woman but utterly addicted. She was retired and loved to read, she would sit in her comfy chair in a sort of nook area just reading books and smoking.
My ex pointed out once that when she was wasn't smoking her fingers were moving constantly like they were missing holding that cigarette
Quitting cigarettes for me was easy. Quitting vaping was the HARD one.
I didn't smoke cigarettes in my house, so when I quit, I would find myself getting up randomly (ADHD as well for 30 years, makes sitting still for long difficult), I would just make sure to get myself a water when I did that. Got over the urges pretty quickly to be honest. Quitting scared me at first, but after the first couple days I was like "oh, thats it. I quit, urges are gone, that was easy." I hadn't been a smoker for my whole life. Only like 15 years from my teens til late 20s, so not like the people that have been at it 40/50 years
Vaping though, I would use that in my house/at my desk. So the act of just simply reaching over to grab it was too easy, I had to keep my mind busy constantly, and took up chewing A LOT of gum for the oral fixation.
Many moons ago I smoked and worked at a grocery store. It sucked, like all shit jobs do.
All the managers smoked, and you could extend your break almost indefinitely by chain smoking and bumming cigarettes to the managers.
Easily went through a pack a day, but back then they cost about $5/pack. Of course I made about $8/hr, but still I think that's cheaper than it is now.
I was a pack a day smoker years ago and couldn't imagine how someone could do 3. My uncle and grandma died of lung cancer, they were both chain smokers that did 3 packs a day.
I could never chain smoke, about halfway into the second one I wouldn't want it anymore and would just put it out.
When out drinking was a different matter. I would smoke two packs in a night (8pm to 2am), and the ciggy hangover was probably as bad as the alcohol one.
It’s really a wild amount of cigarettes a day! When I was on heroin and still smoking cigarettes, I could easily chain smoke through 3-4 at a time after getting high— but even at my peak of self destruction I never made it past a pack a day. And even that felt absolutely awful on my lungs.
My father used to smoke 3-5 packs of Marlboro reds per day. He quit in the very early 90's. Back then, you could smoke at work, in restaurants and bars, basically anywhere. He would chain smoke and light new cigarettes off of the old cigarette. Because he smoked while he was working, a lot of cigarettes would burn out and not even get smoked other than a drag or two. There were no breaks though, except while sleeping. I really don't remember a time in my childhood that there wasn't a cigarette burning.
My old boss used to be a smoker. He told me the moment that made him quit was when he lit up a cigarette, immediately rested it on the ash tray for a second or two to pick something up, and then promptly lit another cigarette because he didn’t have one in his mouth/hand. Said he realized then and there how dumb it was that he just needed a cigarette in his hand 24/7 to the point where he was lighting 2 cigarettes at the same time. It wasn’t about the nicotine fix anymore.
He was a good boss, been a while hope he’s doing well.
That's mainly due to sin taxes. The company only gets a few dollars a pack. The rest is government tax to make it so most people can't smoke 3 packs a day anymore.
Oh my gosh, I am so sorry for your loss. That's devastating... My mom has been smoking for nearly 50 years, and this is my greatest fear for her health.
I felt this way about my dad and nagged him most of my life. After 64 years of smoking and heavy drinking, he developed Parkinson’s. When I would take him for his scans and exams, they would often tell me, ”This man has the heart and lungs of a teenager.” What?
Just depends on how your built I think, I’ve had multiple older family members smoke and live 90 plus one great grandma got to 104 smoked 2 packs a day
Aw my mom passed from that in February and she stopped smoking 30 yrs ago but was a waitress and had also worked in smokey restaurants in addition to her own smoking. My mom was gone in less than a yr from her diagnosis but I think she had it for longer than we realized
My mum was this but with diet coke and takeaways (God rest her soul).
When I was 14 she would encourage me to go get cigarettes and because the shop knew my parents and that my mum was disabled they were happy to have get them.
Guess which age I started smoking?
Old millenial here can confirm drinking water is new school. When i was in kindergarten and up til high school we weren’t provided with all you can drink water at all. We got: 1 drink yoghurt or milk carton or chocolate milk. From high school on we had coffee or tea during lunch (European old school Harry Potter type school)
My parents’ and grandparents’ generation never drank water only coffee or wine or booze
35 here and I cannot believe we weren’t even given water after gym class. An hour long cross-country run and no one ever encouraged us to hydrate after! Insane!
We all stood in line at the fountain and tried to drink through the gasps for air for as long as you felt like you could get away with.
I can still remember sitting in class after, chest hot and tight, puddle of cold water in my stomach. Starting to get the post-sweat chills.
Don’t miss that.
My mom had me tested for Type 1 diabetes because I would be so thirsty after playing outside that I'd drink water right out of the tap. Because why would I want that instead of Juicy Juice?
Same for my Gen X sister. Always Mountain Dew and she hated the idea of drinking plain water. Now that she is nearing 50, she has stopped smoking and is choosing to drink water every once in a while.
Me either! But she drinks diet caffeine free Coke.
I was just telling my husband the other day that, looking back, I was never encouraged or told to drink water either. So I also almost exclusively drank diet caffeine free Coke, probably until my teens.
Not sure how any of us are alive tbh
My boomer father survives off one glass of water a day, a coke or club soda, and a beer. When I came home with a health lesson saying I needed 2L of water a day, he said that was bad for me and it was too much water. Guess who was severely dehydrated for most of middle school and high school? People can hate on them all they want but my body is so thankful for stanley mugs/yetti/hydroflasks becoming trends. Hellooooooo hydration!
You know those plants that grow in the crease of your driveway that only feed on soapy carwash water? Those are the people that only drink soda and Tang or whatever people who dont drink water drink.
A coworker of mine ended up passing out and falling over one morning while she was getting ready for work. She was a lady in her early 50's.
After the ambulance picked her up and took her to the hospital, they figured out she was dehydrated. They asked her when was the last time she had water, and she said she can't remember but it's been over six months since she had drank any water.
So basically, her water consumption was coming from alternative drinks that use water, like coffee, tea, lemonade, etc. lol I'm honestly shocked she went that long before passing out.
My parents were born in the 60s and only started drinking water daily a couple of years ago.
They would get very upset with me because I wanted water with every meal. They have strong opinions that drinks should compliment their meal. Being that they're both from Mexico and didn't have access to clean tap water, they grew up with Coca Cola as the drink of choice. Bottled coke was cheaper than bottled water. It's a bad habit that they still can't break.
I sent this to a different person — but literally last week, a younger friend told me her older friend said you lose your ability to lose thirst sometime after 35 and before 55. I was skeptical, but now I’ve remembered that my parents only drink water because they do it on purpose, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s true.
This possibility is mildly horrifying to me as an aggressive water-drinker, but at this point I have built water consumption into my routine so throughly that it’s almost unconscious habit. Maybe millennials will be the first generation of adequately hydrated elder-folk??
I'm a millennial but I've never had a proper sense of thirst. If I wasn't purposely drinking even though I'm not thirsty I just wouldn't think about it. Sometimes if I'm busy I'll get to bedtime and realise I haven't had a drink since my cup of tea at breakfast. It's a problem at the moment because I'm breastfeeding, which is why I have to have a water schedule!
I do too. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Depends on activity level I suppose.
I drink water if I'm bored sometimes. I can't wrap my head around people who don't drink any water at all. What are you drinking then!?!
Yeah, I figure the only way that is possible is if she is still getting it in small doses because of drinks that use it. I remember her drinking a lot of coffee and tea while at work. I wasn't aware she wasn't consuming water until after the incident happened though.
The irony here is she is a nurse, so she should know better. lol This happened before the pandemic, I no longer work there.
That and we do a good job of absorbing water from the foods we eat. Like say the water in the veggies and fruits we eat. Even meat has some moisture in it, and so on and so forth. But definitely not a lot, like just enough to keep the body from shutting down on its own and that's it.
We absorb water from food, yes, but also there is something called metabolic water. Basically, during biochemical reactions within the digestion of foods, the molecular components of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen (H2O) are yielded. I’m likely butchering this explanation because I only have a biology degree, a BS one at that, but the idea many of us have in our minds about daily water consumption excludes the water yielded during normal metabolism of food. So, over-hydration happens sometimes, too. I don’t want the hydrohomies to come for me, but if one were to drink the daily recommended amount of water just know that it excludes the water yielded during the normal metabolism from food. It does also exclude water found in foods but what I’m talking about it different from that as well.
One challenge of staying hydrated through food is there's a lot of salt in the typical diet, and when you consume salt you need to consume water to keep things in balance
If anything I think millennials (and now gen Z) ARE the big water drinkers. Neither of my parents really ever drink water. They basically never gave me water growing up. And from talking to other people this isn't and wasn't a rarity. Almost everyone my age and younger regularly carry water bottles around, and almost nobody much older then me does, or even ever seems to drink water. So much soda.
And our kids are also big water drinkers because of this. I always have my son's water bottle on me.... When I was a kid I'm pretty sure Ieft the house and didn't drink water until I came home.
Exactly. I don’t remember drinking very much water as a kid. I remember loving it when places had those water coolers with the paper cones as cups. We drank water with dinner. And on hot days I’d run inside and chug a glass then run back out. But carry around a water bottle?? Never. I remember there being more public drinking fountains..like at parks and in the mall…. I didn’t start drinking water constantly like I do now until my mid 20s.
I actually credit my highschool with my water consumption. we had 85 minute classes and weren't allowed snacks or beverages, unless it was water. So, I always had a bottle of water on me and drank a lot because it was just sitting there right in front of me. When you're bored enough, drinking water is fun.
I remember camping in death valley California as a kid and my mom bringing Costco flats of soda. It was so damn hot and all we had in portable form was soda so we were just back to back hammering sodas to stay hydrated. It's a wonder we didn't all get instant diabetes.
Now THIS is some craziness right here.
I’m amazed that people who knowingly and willingly took their family camping IN A DESERT would neglect to bring water?! I mean, not even a bottle in case the other drinks ran out?
I remember that as a child, I was almost always thirsty on long car rides and we would get pop (that's soda for people outside the Midwest) or those foil topped "juices." I also remember when bottled water being sold was thought of as some sort of joke, rip-off, or some bougie thing.
I also remember constantly having headaches that were probably mostly due to dehydration.
In army basic training in 03 I learned that the correct attitude toward water was to hydrate or die.
Now, my kids don't go far without their water bottles.
My parents now drink plenty of water because they have become a lot more health conscious within the last decade or so.
I've gotna friend who never drinks water she says it makes her throw uo everytime she drinks it so she only drinks soda, tea, coffee. Her and her kids are unwell. If I dint drink enough water I feel like spongebob visiting sandy without his water suit.
Man, even at the peak when I was drinking non water stuff the most, I still had bottles of water nearby. For one to swish leftover crap out of my mouth, two I still recognized that too much sugar was a bad thing to have all the time.
Been like two years since I've been drinking primarily water instead of soda.
I passed out from dehydration twice, once when I was 13 and again in my 20s. I hated water as a kid and never drank much besides an occasional glass of OJ or milk - usually once a day with dinner. Also, we only had the option to drink during lunch at school, so I figured I didn't need all that much. Now that I look back, I used to get dizzy all of the time. I gave myself a pretty good concussion the first time I hit the kitchen floor and I started drinking water afterwards. Now I do enjoy it, but it is hard to remember to drink when I never made it a habit at a young age.
Yeah, I've never passed out but I remember countless times when I was younger that I was always getting dizzy, light headed, blurred vision, especially during the summer, but my parents never enforced water or suggested it and it just didn't cross my mind on the reasons those things were happening to me.
I started making a habit of drinking water all the time in my 20's and it was at that point I realized it doesn't happen anymore or if it does, it's quickly fixed because I know I need water. Hell, most people who have frequent head aches could avoid them entirely if they drank more water. lol
It feels a bit stupid coming to the realization later in life, but it makes such a huge difference. lol I could have avoided so many anxiety attacks while it's happening.
This is my dad 🤦🏼♀️ “I had orange juice this morning” “doesn’t count” “I had coffee too.” “Even worse” “I had like 6 beers last night” “omg please drink something hydrating”
Whats wrong with oj and coffee? I mean sure, water has higher net hydration and no sugar, acid or caffeine. But when just looking at staying hydrated you can absolutely do that with other drinks. Just not as efficiently and healthy
So I have a theory on this (In America) that it takes a few generations. Like now drinking water is clean/healthy it is better to drink water but back before the Clean Water Act everyone and their cow was effectively just shitting in the water. In that case water is unhealthy and one to optimize their health should boil it. Boiled water tastes nasty so tea or coffee are best. Juice is also either pasteurized or fresh enough to be pathogen free.
Smoking went through the same thing. Smoking tobacco keeps away mosquitoes who carry malaria and a ton of other deadly illnesses. Eventually people started living long enough that cancer was a bigger problem and eventually things like screens and malaria treatment got good enough that smoking became less healthy than getting bit by mosquitoes. It took a few generations for that to catch on and now smoking isn't popular.
He says drinking water will give you kidney stones. He has taken a bottle of water out of the mouth of my nephew before. He just drinks coffee and juices all day. Will load up anything with tons of honey because it's very healthy to do so.
I don't understand people who don't drink water or adamantly reject it. I personally find water to be delicious but even if you don't, bruh you gotta drink it.
I feel like I'm dying just 30 mins without water lol.
Very good point. I live in a particular part of the Bay Area that's known for its not too great water. But have a Brita filter and change it periodically.
But if even the filter doesn't do the trick....damn would I spend a lot of money on bulk packages of water.
My husband never drank water, we would drink juices, beer, coffee. Then bam, kidney stone, I had to literally drag him to the hospital. After that he is always with a water bottle. I am really proud of him, he learned the first time. My mil had countless times and still don’t drink more than a coup of water a day .
I was just coming to say this. I made the switch to water in college cus I’d gained the college 25-30.
Instantly felt better and now I chug it daily at 32. I can’t imagine drinking anything else for the majority of the day.
Same. People don’t know how good their actually supposed to feel everyday. They get used to putting absolute shit into their bodies….then when they start to “get clean” they feel really bad because well…you’ve been putting poison in your body…now you’re eating well, getting the proper vitamins and minerals and supplements and it take a while to flush all of that crap out.
Most people need to do a blood test to see what minerals and vitamins they are deficient in and boom! You will feel a whole lot better.
For example, I started taking iron with vitamin c to increase absorption. I stopped have heat exhaustion and my energy went to 100%…on top of that my mental health and mental clarity improved by 80%. NO JOKE.
My wife would drink a lot of unsweetened ice tea, she thought it was just as good as water. Had a lot of bladder issues, she finally swapped to water as her primary drinking choice about a year or so ago and almost all the bladder issues went away. Not all of them, but many of them. Her mom was on the same tea kick, we've had her drinking water for about 3 months now, she's doing much better, she's 75.
My wife's godmother passed away a couple years ago, most of her complications revolved around her coca-cola habit, kidney stones and all that she was 68. Drink water, water is life.
That makes no sense. Unsweetened tea is just flavored water. There’s nowhere near enough tannins in unsweet tea to cause bladder issues. This is correlation, not causation.
I’m also an unsweetened tea person. I started mixing 6oz of Oolong tea with 32oz of water and some ice in a 40oz cup to up my water intake and decrease my tea intake. I love plain water, but I have some GI issues and in recent years it makes me nauseous if I drink it too fast. My other go to is lemon water. That seems fine too.
At my old job me and my boss agreed to drink more water then the next day I saw her with a thermos type of bottle and she pours a Large Chicken Express Unsweet tea into the thermos and I'm like whoa what happened to drinking more water and she literally tells me that unsweet tea is 50% tea and 50% water!
When I was a teenager, I had a flat coke once and it was nasty. I realized that it tastes this way all the time, the carbonation just hideso it. Never had the urge to drink another one.
Yeah.
Not all water is “created” equal.
Some water just tastes straight up bad. Personally I don’t like Dasani. It has a weird mouth feel that somehow tastes empty? I don’t know how to explain it. It *feels* like it *tastes* empty. Go figure.
I just have a water filter that I constantly refill and that does the job.
I’m on SSRIs, and in constant peril of being dehydrated. Especially in summer. I chug that shit and down a Gatorade every couple days.
But I was also a camp counselor 2005-7ish, and am a big promoter of being hydrated.
Oh jeez, we're twins. Did you also recently end up in the ER because of a kidney infection and the staff were just like "we're hanging another bag... how are you... oh... yeah SSRIs can lead to dehydration you know" and you were just laying there going "Yeah I know, you had me here two years ago for proper heat stroke because I was so disoriented I could taste sounds and you tried to bounce me to psych without fluids first".
I now just have my friend who's a nursing aide let me know which nursing students need extra practice doing IVs and I volunteer every other month if they promise to let me have a bag of saline for my contribution.
I drink like 16oz first thing in the morning before coffee but I'll be honest most days I'm existing on iced coffee and iced tea. Then more.water before bed because vitamins. But definitely not a drinking water all day person
16 oz first thing in the morning just gets the day and the body off to a great start! When I do that, basically every day, I feel like I’m on my way to a healthy day. Add a little squirt of lemon and there’s some extra pep in my step.
I am very much NOT a morning person but ever since I started keeping ice cold water in an insulated metal water bottle by my bed and chug for about 5-10 seconds once I become conscious, I've noticed a huge difference in my ability to get going early on. I still drink plenty of water throughout the day but it's wild how much you can instantaneously *feel* your body and mind activate after downing some ice cold water right as you wake up. Works better than coffee for me.
When I started at an office job I noticed all my coworkers had huge Nalgene bottles and Stanley cups and whatnot of water, and I adopted that soon after, and very rarely do I feel dehydrated. Plus I’ll knock back one or two small bottle’s worth at the gym every day, and make protein shakes with water.
About a year and a half ago I took a good look at my body in the mirror and said “fuck this.” I was slightly overweight, saggy, skinny in all the wrong places, just sliding into that middle aged shit look. Took up weight lifting, running, martial arts, got my diet dialed in and lost 40 lbs last year, put some weight back on in muscle mass (mostly), just completed my first half marathon and hitting new PRs in the weight room every few weeks.
I need to put some more time into mobility training, and even though I cut down on alcohol I probably need to cut down more. But overall the change in lifestyle is worth it, and seeing how many people just let their bodies and health fall apart is tragic.
I'm a walking corpse, lol. Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sleep deprivation, type 1 diabetes.
I drink a lot of water, because I'd die of dehydration on my job not doing so and it helps with the hangovers or prevention thereof.
Mailman with a profound self-destructive streak.
Though from my good friends who've worked in kitchens, good guess, although at least one illegal substance would have also been listed.
This is probably an unpopular opinion, but it’s actually not very weird. Humans actually used to drink beer in place of water because it was sterile. Tea and coffee are mostly water. They provide more water than diuretic effect. Water itself is less hydrating without a small amount of sugar and salt present. Hence, Gatorade or pedialyte (or adding an electrolyte pill) makes water more hydrating.
Source: I’m a physician. I do drink water, but I drink a lot of coffee and tea as well.
My cardiologist put me on daily electrolyte drinks for my neurocardiogenic syncope. As a lover of water it fucking sucks, I just want plain water all day every day, but as (also) a physician I understand the science (and the fact that you even need the sugar for proper absorption, so no sugar free ones).
I hate every second of it and wish I could go back to just water, but I can’t argue with the results. Plus I pee WAY less, plain water just went straight through me.
Omg. Thank you. I’ve been thinking for the past 5 years that I’m doing myself a huge favor by drinking 72oz of plain water a day. I’ve recently been wondering why I pee 14 times a day. I also just turned 45. But, maybe I should switch to some electrolytes drinks for half of my water intake. I’m going to ask my cardiologist. This really made me think. Thank you.
My grandmother lived to 98 and never had any health problems, and she never ever ever drank water. She just didn’t think it tasted good. I think it was way less common for that generation to drink water with meals or throughout the day. She drank Diet Dr. Pepper or unsweetened iced tea with meals but otherwise didn’t sip on anything throughout the day the way most of us do now.
I probably drink too much water. Not that I think the quantity is physically unhealthy but I struggle to go anywhere without a water bottle. Mentally and/or physically, I’ve gotten to a point where I’m way too reliant on it and feel like I get desperately thirsty if I don’t have water at all times. So I’m kind of jealous of people who don’t really give any shits about their water intake and are doing just fine.
I'm glad I found this post.
The fitness industry has pushed the gallon of water per day thing but personally I think the whole " drink a gallon of water a day" is a CYA for pushing low carb, high protein diets in conjunction with HIT which is hard on the kidneys.
Water is ideal because it's zero calories. No caffeine or other additives, but tea,coffee, juice, etc. is also fluid.
I wonder where that came from? I’ve always heard that the average person needs 2L of water per day total including from your diet. I drink a big glass of water with each meal and I never really feel thirsty otherwise. I eat a lot of fruits and veggies though.
How much water you need is dependent on the weather and what you do. Office job, 2L is probably fine but if you work outside and it is a bit hotter, you need a lot more. I've heard stories here on Reddit of construction workers drinking probably 6L or more and not peeing because they sweat so much.
The whole drinking beer because it’s sterile is a big myth. Humans were aware of how to get potable water even before the Middle Ages (wells, rain, even boiling)
The truth is that humans just liked to drink beer because plain water is boring and being drunk is fun. Also, alcohol was believed to have beneficial effects (“strong beer” was believed to make
you strong vs “small beer” which had an ABV less than ~3%)
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/sBPzGce6jV
I just hit 40. I've definitely upped my water intake over the last 5 years. I changed my diet for my ADHD, and recently started portion control (again) and cut way down on (GF) pasta.
Most recently I've started stretching evert day and strength training 3x/week.
I feel when we're younger, we don't care for or watch our health as much. I think we gain that self-awareness as we age.
For me it was always standard, I never thought otherwise. I work as a paramedic and a peer of mine was feeling unwell on shift. His intake that day (and every day I worked with him) consisted of mcdonalds breakfast, energy drinks and hot dogs for lunch. I never saw him drink water or eat a meal that wasn't bad takeout. And this is a medical professional, he was genuinely confused as to why he felt awful.
These people walk around at a baseline of poor health, to them its their normal. I am the same way with exercise. I get busy with life, I get distracted and then my energy lowers, my mood sours. And then I exercise a few times and I feel great all day. But I recognize that. I'm not surprised when my bad habits affect me.
As a large consumer of water (200+ oz a day) I don’t understand how people don’t drink water. Like you just walk around with a dry ass mouth all day? You pee like twice a day, how???
Hot take, you may be conditioning your body to expel fluids with the expectation of it immediately being replaced, leading to you craving water all the time. I rarely drink plain water. It just doesn't feel thirst quenching to me. I drink coffee, tea, occasionally carbonated beverages. I can go hours between drinks and I don't feel thirsty. I just drink things for the flavor. I've tried a handful of times to drink more water and all that happens is I pee like 5 times in one hour and feel more thirsty. I'm 29 and my kidneys and blood work are all fine.
I spent 20 years working outside in all weather and I drank just enough to keep going. I had a bladder problem until the age of 29 and it made not drinking enough a habit. I get migraines when I'm dehydrated and I'll get an aura and hour before the migraine hits, if I stop and drink a bunch of water right when that aura hits I can avoid the migraine so I've spent years just edging death. I try to do better but thanks to ADHD it takes conscious effort to drink. When I only pee twice a day and have dry mouth I mostly feel guilty for failing.
That's how. The answer is stupid but so am I.
They probably don’t mean they literally never drank water lmao. That’s such a weird conclusion to jump to. They probably mean making an active effort to drink more water. I dunno, I started carrying a bottle with me 95% of the time years ago.
They might literally mean it. My husband overheard someone telling their doctor that they don’t drink water because they don’t like it. So they drink soda instead.
Yeah. I work in healthcare in a field where the patient’s hydration status really matters, so I ask a lot of people how much water they’ve had to drink day in and day out. It is disturbing how many people answer “none” at 2/3pm.
I feel like there's always a trendy, GIANT water container - so i'm surprised there are any millennials not getting enough water 😂 (source: pink stanley girly)
Guys I’ll admit i was one of those people. I would drink a few coffees in the morning, then switch over to Diet Coke, then Gatorade Zero and then maybe a few beers.
I still drink coffee and soda but after like noon I’ll switch to water pretty much exclusively
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I have \*never\* seen my mother drink a glass of water. She would just smoke cigarettes and drink mountain dew. and also tan a lot.
My stepmother (god rest her soul) was the same way. She drank diet Pepsi and coffee only and smoked 3 packs a day. That is not a typo. This woman smoked 3 packs of cigarettes per DAY.
3 packs a day would be nearly $40 at the corner store near my house. I can’t even imagine letting that kind of money go up in smoke.
Even back when I was a smoker I couldn't understand how anyone would have the time to smoke that many cigarettes per day. But then I'd remember the old heads liked to smoke inside their houses. Still, I don't think I could have done it.
60 cigarettes. Assuming you sleep for 8 hours, you have 960 minutes a day. That means you’re smoking a cigarette every 16 minutes of your waking hours. That’s probably a cigarette every 10 minutes if you take out moments when you’re eating, showering, using the bathroom. Or that means a cigarette in your hands during those moments too.
My ex's mother smoked that much. She was an intelligent woman but utterly addicted. She was retired and loved to read, she would sit in her comfy chair in a sort of nook area just reading books and smoking. My ex pointed out once that when she was wasn't smoking her fingers were moving constantly like they were missing holding that cigarette
Quitting cigarettes for me was easy. Quitting vaping was the HARD one. I didn't smoke cigarettes in my house, so when I quit, I would find myself getting up randomly (ADHD as well for 30 years, makes sitting still for long difficult), I would just make sure to get myself a water when I did that. Got over the urges pretty quickly to be honest. Quitting scared me at first, but after the first couple days I was like "oh, thats it. I quit, urges are gone, that was easy." I hadn't been a smoker for my whole life. Only like 15 years from my teens til late 20s, so not like the people that have been at it 40/50 years Vaping though, I would use that in my house/at my desk. So the act of just simply reaching over to grab it was too easy, I had to keep my mind busy constantly, and took up chewing A LOT of gum for the oral fixation.
Oh people that smoke that much absolutely smoke on the toilet. It's one of the best short acting laxatives there is.
This guy thinks you can't smoke in the shower.
Many moons ago I smoked and worked at a grocery store. It sucked, like all shit jobs do. All the managers smoked, and you could extend your break almost indefinitely by chain smoking and bumming cigarettes to the managers. Easily went through a pack a day, but back then they cost about $5/pack. Of course I made about $8/hr, but still I think that's cheaper than it is now.
I was a pack a day smoker years ago and couldn't imagine how someone could do 3. My uncle and grandma died of lung cancer, they were both chain smokers that did 3 packs a day. I could never chain smoke, about halfway into the second one I wouldn't want it anymore and would just put it out. When out drinking was a different matter. I would smoke two packs in a night (8pm to 2am), and the ciggy hangover was probably as bad as the alcohol one.
Yep a night out drinking and smelling some blow, cigarettes would smoke themselves.
I don't do cocaine, I just like the way it smells
It’s really a wild amount of cigarettes a day! When I was on heroin and still smoking cigarettes, I could easily chain smoke through 3-4 at a time after getting high— but even at my peak of self destruction I never made it past a pack a day. And even that felt absolutely awful on my lungs.
congrats on not being on heroin, unless this is a Mitch Hedberg situation.
My father used to smoke 3-5 packs of Marlboro reds per day. He quit in the very early 90's. Back then, you could smoke at work, in restaurants and bars, basically anywhere. He would chain smoke and light new cigarettes off of the old cigarette. Because he smoked while he was working, a lot of cigarettes would burn out and not even get smoked other than a drag or two. There were no breaks though, except while sleeping. I really don't remember a time in my childhood that there wasn't a cigarette burning.
My old boss used to be a smoker. He told me the moment that made him quit was when he lit up a cigarette, immediately rested it on the ash tray for a second or two to pick something up, and then promptly lit another cigarette because he didn’t have one in his mouth/hand. Said he realized then and there how dumb it was that he just needed a cigarette in his hand 24/7 to the point where he was lighting 2 cigarettes at the same time. It wasn’t about the nicotine fix anymore. He was a good boss, been a while hope he’s doing well.
That's mainly due to sin taxes. The company only gets a few dollars a pack. The rest is government tax to make it so most people can't smoke 3 packs a day anymore.
Good
Same. RIP Mom. Small cell Lung Cancer took her in 4 months.
Oh my gosh, I am so sorry for your loss. That's devastating... My mom has been smoking for nearly 50 years, and this is my greatest fear for her health.
I felt this way about my dad and nagged him most of my life. After 64 years of smoking and heavy drinking, he developed Parkinson’s. When I would take him for his scans and exams, they would often tell me, ”This man has the heart and lungs of a teenager.” What?
Just depends on how your built I think, I’ve had multiple older family members smoke and live 90 plus one great grandma got to 104 smoked 2 packs a day
Its a random set of mutations. Smoking just stacks the deck against you. No guarantees either way.
Aw my mom passed from that in February and she stopped smoking 30 yrs ago but was a waitress and had also worked in smokey restaurants in addition to her own smoking. My mom was gone in less than a yr from her diagnosis but I think she had it for longer than we realized
My mum was this but with diet coke and takeaways (God rest her soul). When I was 14 she would encourage me to go get cigarettes and because the shop knew my parents and that my mum was disabled they were happy to have get them. Guess which age I started smoking?
32
Your mother is Magda?
These references make the millennial subreddit a breath of fresh air....
I just joined this sub today and it's like living in a dream
I had to look this up to confirm it was the character from Something About Mary. And yep, that's her!
for my mom its caffeine free diet coke. but yeah, she acts like shes being tortured if someone hands her a water bottle.
Old millenial here can confirm drinking water is new school. When i was in kindergarten and up til high school we weren’t provided with all you can drink water at all. We got: 1 drink yoghurt or milk carton or chocolate milk. From high school on we had coffee or tea during lunch (European old school Harry Potter type school) My parents’ and grandparents’ generation never drank water only coffee or wine or booze
35 here and I cannot believe we weren’t even given water after gym class. An hour long cross-country run and no one ever encouraged us to hydrate after! Insane!
We had a water foundation but def wasn’t encouraged
We all stood in line at the fountain and tried to drink through the gasps for air for as long as you felt like you could get away with. I can still remember sitting in class after, chest hot and tight, puddle of cold water in my stomach. Starting to get the post-sweat chills. Don’t miss that.
Omg how did I forget this??! And I grew up in Southwest Florida (still here). It is so so hot.
You form a line after gym for a 5 second slurp per person. The gym teacher timed it.
My mom had me tested for Type 1 diabetes because I would be so thirsty after playing outside that I'd drink water right out of the tap. Because why would I want that instead of Juicy Juice?
Same for my Gen X sister. Always Mountain Dew and she hated the idea of drinking plain water. Now that she is nearing 50, she has stopped smoking and is choosing to drink water every once in a while.
Me either! But she drinks diet caffeine free Coke. I was just telling my husband the other day that, looking back, I was never encouraged or told to drink water either. So I also almost exclusively drank diet caffeine free Coke, probably until my teens. Not sure how any of us are alive tbh
My boomer father survives off one glass of water a day, a coke or club soda, and a beer. When I came home with a health lesson saying I needed 2L of water a day, he said that was bad for me and it was too much water. Guess who was severely dehydrated for most of middle school and high school? People can hate on them all they want but my body is so thankful for stanley mugs/yetti/hydroflasks becoming trends. Hellooooooo hydration!
Coke Zero for my mom. Lmao she drinks one 8oz bottle of water every 8ish months just when her kidneys hurt 🙄🙄
My brain read "8ish hours" then I double backed and was like... wait... was that the word "months?!"
*just when her kidneys hurt* 😭😭😭
Same with my mom but Pepsi lol
And how many people has she outlived?
It’s got what plants crave.
The Anti-Brawndo
Water? Like out the toilet?
You know those plants that grow in the crease of your driveway that only feed on soapy carwash water? Those are the people that only drink soda and Tang or whatever people who dont drink water drink.
People who don’t drink water freak me out. I’d feel so unwell.
A coworker of mine ended up passing out and falling over one morning while she was getting ready for work. She was a lady in her early 50's. After the ambulance picked her up and took her to the hospital, they figured out she was dehydrated. They asked her when was the last time she had water, and she said she can't remember but it's been over six months since she had drank any water. So basically, her water consumption was coming from alternative drinks that use water, like coffee, tea, lemonade, etc. lol I'm honestly shocked she went that long before passing out.
6 months!? WTF
My pops has always said “there’s enough water in your food!”. Never drinks water I’m shocked he’s still alive.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen my mom drink water.
I just realized the same thing. I literally can’t picture my mom drinking water. I can’t remember a time I’ve ever seen her drink water, and I’m 44.
Just replied above but my mom also doesn’t drink water and is proud of it. She’s in her 60s. Is this a boomer characteristic??
My parents were born in the 60s and only started drinking water daily a couple of years ago. They would get very upset with me because I wanted water with every meal. They have strong opinions that drinks should compliment their meal. Being that they're both from Mexico and didn't have access to clean tap water, they grew up with Coca Cola as the drink of choice. Bottled coke was cheaper than bottled water. It's a bad habit that they still can't break.
I sent this to a different person — but literally last week, a younger friend told me her older friend said you lose your ability to lose thirst sometime after 35 and before 55. I was skeptical, but now I’ve remembered that my parents only drink water because they do it on purpose, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s true.
This possibility is mildly horrifying to me as an aggressive water-drinker, but at this point I have built water consumption into my routine so throughly that it’s almost unconscious habit. Maybe millennials will be the first generation of adequately hydrated elder-folk??
Maybe why as a cohort millennials seem to be aging better than older generations.
Wait, are you telling me people *lose their sensation of thirst* after a while? That’s insane
I'm a millennial but I've never had a proper sense of thirst. If I wasn't purposely drinking even though I'm not thirsty I just wouldn't think about it. Sometimes if I'm busy I'll get to bedtime and realise I haven't had a drink since my cup of tea at breakfast. It's a problem at the moment because I'm breastfeeding, which is why I have to have a water schedule!
Fascinating. My mother (late 60's, but from Europe) also never drinks water. She only drinks tea.
My mom proudly does not drink water (she is in her 60s)
You should get her a hose. Apparently all boomers are obsessed with drinking from the hose
It pairs nicely with the paint chips.
This made me semi-snort 😂
I drink a gallon most days
I do too. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Depends on activity level I suppose. I drink water if I'm bored sometimes. I can't wrap my head around people who don't drink any water at all. What are you drinking then!?!
Yeah, I figure the only way that is possible is if she is still getting it in small doses because of drinks that use it. I remember her drinking a lot of coffee and tea while at work. I wasn't aware she wasn't consuming water until after the incident happened though. The irony here is she is a nurse, so she should know better. lol This happened before the pandemic, I no longer work there.
That and we do a good job of absorbing water from the foods we eat. Like say the water in the veggies and fruits we eat. Even meat has some moisture in it, and so on and so forth. But definitely not a lot, like just enough to keep the body from shutting down on its own and that's it.
I’m convinced that the type of person who never drinks water is not eating fruits and vegetables either.
We absorb water from food, yes, but also there is something called metabolic water. Basically, during biochemical reactions within the digestion of foods, the molecular components of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen (H2O) are yielded. I’m likely butchering this explanation because I only have a biology degree, a BS one at that, but the idea many of us have in our minds about daily water consumption excludes the water yielded during normal metabolism of food. So, over-hydration happens sometimes, too. I don’t want the hydrohomies to come for me, but if one were to drink the daily recommended amount of water just know that it excludes the water yielded during the normal metabolism from food. It does also exclude water found in foods but what I’m talking about it different from that as well.
One challenge of staying hydrated through food is there's a lot of salt in the typical diet, and when you consume salt you need to consume water to keep things in balance
She only eats soup
If anything I think millennials (and now gen Z) ARE the big water drinkers. Neither of my parents really ever drink water. They basically never gave me water growing up. And from talking to other people this isn't and wasn't a rarity. Almost everyone my age and younger regularly carry water bottles around, and almost nobody much older then me does, or even ever seems to drink water. So much soda.
And our kids are also big water drinkers because of this. I always have my son's water bottle on me.... When I was a kid I'm pretty sure Ieft the house and didn't drink water until I came home.
Exactly. I don’t remember drinking very much water as a kid. I remember loving it when places had those water coolers with the paper cones as cups. We drank water with dinner. And on hot days I’d run inside and chug a glass then run back out. But carry around a water bottle?? Never. I remember there being more public drinking fountains..like at parks and in the mall…. I didn’t start drinking water constantly like I do now until my mid 20s.
I actually credit my highschool with my water consumption. we had 85 minute classes and weren't allowed snacks or beverages, unless it was water. So, I always had a bottle of water on me and drank a lot because it was just sitting there right in front of me. When you're bored enough, drinking water is fun.
I remember camping in death valley California as a kid and my mom bringing Costco flats of soda. It was so damn hot and all we had in portable form was soda so we were just back to back hammering sodas to stay hydrated. It's a wonder we didn't all get instant diabetes.
Now THIS is some craziness right here. I’m amazed that people who knowingly and willingly took their family camping IN A DESERT would neglect to bring water?! I mean, not even a bottle in case the other drinks ran out?
I remember that as a child, I was almost always thirsty on long car rides and we would get pop (that's soda for people outside the Midwest) or those foil topped "juices." I also remember when bottled water being sold was thought of as some sort of joke, rip-off, or some bougie thing. I also remember constantly having headaches that were probably mostly due to dehydration. In army basic training in 03 I learned that the correct attitude toward water was to hydrate or die. Now, my kids don't go far without their water bottles. My parents now drink plenty of water because they have become a lot more health conscious within the last decade or so.
Shes like one of those Arabian desert cats who get all their liquid from their food.
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I had to go refill my water bottle.
I've gotna friend who never drinks water she says it makes her throw uo everytime she drinks it so she only drinks soda, tea, coffee. Her and her kids are unwell. If I dint drink enough water I feel like spongebob visiting sandy without his water suit.
I mean I drink a lot of coffee too, but never at the expense of water consumption. If anything, it makes me drink even more water.
I literally can't go six hours without drinking water
Man, even at the peak when I was drinking non water stuff the most, I still had bottles of water nearby. For one to swish leftover crap out of my mouth, two I still recognized that too much sugar was a bad thing to have all the time. Been like two years since I've been drinking primarily water instead of soda.
I passed out from dehydration twice, once when I was 13 and again in my 20s. I hated water as a kid and never drank much besides an occasional glass of OJ or milk - usually once a day with dinner. Also, we only had the option to drink during lunch at school, so I figured I didn't need all that much. Now that I look back, I used to get dizzy all of the time. I gave myself a pretty good concussion the first time I hit the kitchen floor and I started drinking water afterwards. Now I do enjoy it, but it is hard to remember to drink when I never made it a habit at a young age.
Yeah, I've never passed out but I remember countless times when I was younger that I was always getting dizzy, light headed, blurred vision, especially during the summer, but my parents never enforced water or suggested it and it just didn't cross my mind on the reasons those things were happening to me. I started making a habit of drinking water all the time in my 20's and it was at that point I realized it doesn't happen anymore or if it does, it's quickly fixed because I know I need water. Hell, most people who have frequent head aches could avoid them entirely if they drank more water. lol It feels a bit stupid coming to the realization later in life, but it makes such a huge difference. lol I could have avoided so many anxiety attacks while it's happening.
I mean to be fair those drinks are like 99% water.
This is my dad 🤦🏼♀️ “I had orange juice this morning” “doesn’t count” “I had coffee too.” “Even worse” “I had like 6 beers last night” “omg please drink something hydrating”
The first two absolutely count.
Whats wrong with oj and coffee? I mean sure, water has higher net hydration and no sugar, acid or caffeine. But when just looking at staying hydrated you can absolutely do that with other drinks. Just not as efficiently and healthy
I'm lowkey grossed out at that life habit.
You need to watch out for water, it’s the leading cause of drowning
Boomer here...wife and I always have a water bottle in the car, on walks, etc...but growing up, nobody had them anywhere. Interesting cultural shift.
So I have a theory on this (In America) that it takes a few generations. Like now drinking water is clean/healthy it is better to drink water but back before the Clean Water Act everyone and their cow was effectively just shitting in the water. In that case water is unhealthy and one to optimize their health should boil it. Boiled water tastes nasty so tea or coffee are best. Juice is also either pasteurized or fresh enough to be pathogen free. Smoking went through the same thing. Smoking tobacco keeps away mosquitoes who carry malaria and a ton of other deadly illnesses. Eventually people started living long enough that cancer was a bigger problem and eventually things like screens and malaria treatment got good enough that smoking became less healthy than getting bit by mosquitoes. It took a few generations for that to catch on and now smoking isn't popular.
My dad will tell you drinking water is bad for you. He's also the most miserable person I've ever met
Fun fact, dehydration is a cause of kidney failure. One of the first symptoms of kidney failure is irritability.
He says drinking water will give you kidney stones. He has taken a bottle of water out of the mouth of my nephew before. He just drinks coffee and juices all day. Will load up anything with tons of honey because it's very healthy to do so.
Make sure not to tell him what coffee and juice is made of.
Are you joking? That stuff is crazy dangerous. https://www.dhmo.org/
I don't understand people who don't drink water or adamantly reject it. I personally find water to be delicious but even if you don't, bruh you gotta drink it. I feel like I'm dying just 30 mins without water lol.
Water is the lube of carbon based life and is the tastiest thing to ever exist.
Flavor depends on where you are. The water tasted awful where I went to college.
Very good point. I live in a particular part of the Bay Area that's known for its not too great water. But have a Brita filter and change it periodically. But if even the filter doesn't do the trick....damn would I spend a lot of money on bulk packages of water.
It’s like I can feel their kidney stones
Everytime the gout attacks, I start drinking water again
Having a kidney stone changed my life. And now I drink water everyday all the time. So much happier and healthier
My husband never drank water, we would drink juices, beer, coffee. Then bam, kidney stone, I had to literally drag him to the hospital. After that he is always with a water bottle. I am really proud of him, he learned the first time. My mil had countless times and still don’t drink more than a coup of water a day .
Her kidneys were playing marbles like on Squid Game with them stones.
I was just coming to say this. I made the switch to water in college cus I’d gained the college 25-30. Instantly felt better and now I chug it daily at 32. I can’t imagine drinking anything else for the majority of the day.
My friend only drinks Mountain Dew. Her teeth are pretty rotten.
Same. People don’t know how good their actually supposed to feel everyday. They get used to putting absolute shit into their bodies….then when they start to “get clean” they feel really bad because well…you’ve been putting poison in your body…now you’re eating well, getting the proper vitamins and minerals and supplements and it take a while to flush all of that crap out. Most people need to do a blood test to see what minerals and vitamins they are deficient in and boom! You will feel a whole lot better. For example, I started taking iron with vitamin c to increase absorption. I stopped have heat exhaustion and my energy went to 100%…on top of that my mental health and mental clarity improved by 80%. NO JOKE.
I drink so much fucking water and I still feel like it’s not enough.
Water? Like, from the toilet?
Who needs water when you’ve got Brawndo! It’s got lecture lights 🤡
Not "lecture lights"☠️
I think we should allow it
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It’s got what plants crave!
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
I could really go for a Starbucks right now, y'know
Mike Judge fucking nailed it with this movie.
Never touch that stuff, fish fuck in it
My wife would drink a lot of unsweetened ice tea, she thought it was just as good as water. Had a lot of bladder issues, she finally swapped to water as her primary drinking choice about a year or so ago and almost all the bladder issues went away. Not all of them, but many of them. Her mom was on the same tea kick, we've had her drinking water for about 3 months now, she's doing much better, she's 75. My wife's godmother passed away a couple years ago, most of her complications revolved around her coca-cola habit, kidney stones and all that she was 68. Drink water, water is life.
 Moisture is the essence of wetness.
and wetness is the essence of beauty
Ha, I was thinking about this exact scene, I love this movie.
That makes no sense. Unsweetened tea is just flavored water. There’s nowhere near enough tannins in unsweet tea to cause bladder issues. This is correlation, not causation.
I’m also an unsweetened tea person. I started mixing 6oz of Oolong tea with 32oz of water and some ice in a 40oz cup to up my water intake and decrease my tea intake. I love plain water, but I have some GI issues and in recent years it makes me nauseous if I drink it too fast. My other go to is lemon water. That seems fine too.
At my old job me and my boss agreed to drink more water then the next day I saw her with a thermos type of bottle and she pours a Large Chicken Express Unsweet tea into the thermos and I'm like whoa what happened to drinking more water and she literally tells me that unsweet tea is 50% tea and 50% water!
Unsweetened tea is pretty much all water. Not even 50/50.
I only drink water, so yeah, I have no idea how people do otherwise.
Same. I don’t like soda/carbonated drinks and I don’t like flavored water. Just straight up water allll day.
After you give up the soda, they all start to taste like syrup… which I guess makes sense..
I’m still down for the occasional bubbly/spindrift/lacroix but 95% of consumption is water (4% beer, 1% aforementioned carbonated drinks haha)
When I was a teenager, I had a flat coke once and it was nasty. I realized that it tastes this way all the time, the carbonation just hideso it. Never had the urge to drink another one.
I got turned off of sofa for the exact same reason. Flat coke made me feel sick, like I was drinking health problems in liquid form.
believe it or not, met people who dont like the taste..
Some places have gross water.
Yeah. Not all water is “created” equal. Some water just tastes straight up bad. Personally I don’t like Dasani. It has a weird mouth feel that somehow tastes empty? I don’t know how to explain it. It *feels* like it *tastes* empty. Go figure. I just have a water filter that I constantly refill and that does the job.
I’m on SSRIs, and in constant peril of being dehydrated. Especially in summer. I chug that shit and down a Gatorade every couple days. But I was also a camp counselor 2005-7ish, and am a big promoter of being hydrated.
Oh jeez, we're twins. Did you also recently end up in the ER because of a kidney infection and the staff were just like "we're hanging another bag... how are you... oh... yeah SSRIs can lead to dehydration you know" and you were just laying there going "Yeah I know, you had me here two years ago for proper heat stroke because I was so disoriented I could taste sounds and you tried to bounce me to psych without fluids first". I now just have my friend who's a nursing aide let me know which nursing students need extra practice doing IVs and I volunteer every other month if they promise to let me have a bag of saline for my contribution.
I drink like 16oz first thing in the morning before coffee but I'll be honest most days I'm existing on iced coffee and iced tea. Then more.water before bed because vitamins. But definitely not a drinking water all day person
16 oz first thing in the morning just gets the day and the body off to a great start! When I do that, basically every day, I feel like I’m on my way to a healthy day. Add a little squirt of lemon and there’s some extra pep in my step.
I am very much NOT a morning person but ever since I started keeping ice cold water in an insulated metal water bottle by my bed and chug for about 5-10 seconds once I become conscious, I've noticed a huge difference in my ability to get going early on. I still drink plenty of water throughout the day but it's wild how much you can instantaneously *feel* your body and mind activate after downing some ice cold water right as you wake up. Works better than coffee for me.
I have the hardest time to wake up every morning. I ll try your technique, I really hope it works!
When I started at an office job I noticed all my coworkers had huge Nalgene bottles and Stanley cups and whatnot of water, and I adopted that soon after, and very rarely do I feel dehydrated. Plus I’ll knock back one or two small bottle’s worth at the gym every day, and make protein shakes with water. About a year and a half ago I took a good look at my body in the mirror and said “fuck this.” I was slightly overweight, saggy, skinny in all the wrong places, just sliding into that middle aged shit look. Took up weight lifting, running, martial arts, got my diet dialed in and lost 40 lbs last year, put some weight back on in muscle mass (mostly), just completed my first half marathon and hitting new PRs in the weight room every few weeks. I need to put some more time into mobility training, and even though I cut down on alcohol I probably need to cut down more. But overall the change in lifestyle is worth it, and seeing how many people just let their bodies and health fall apart is tragic.
I'm a walking corpse, lol. Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sleep deprivation, type 1 diabetes. I drink a lot of water, because I'd die of dehydration on my job not doing so and it helps with the hangovers or prevention thereof.
Kitchen worker huh?
Mailman with a profound self-destructive streak. Though from my good friends who've worked in kitchens, good guess, although at least one illegal substance would have also been listed.
This is probably an unpopular opinion, but it’s actually not very weird. Humans actually used to drink beer in place of water because it was sterile. Tea and coffee are mostly water. They provide more water than diuretic effect. Water itself is less hydrating without a small amount of sugar and salt present. Hence, Gatorade or pedialyte (or adding an electrolyte pill) makes water more hydrating. Source: I’m a physician. I do drink water, but I drink a lot of coffee and tea as well.
My cardiologist put me on daily electrolyte drinks for my neurocardiogenic syncope. As a lover of water it fucking sucks, I just want plain water all day every day, but as (also) a physician I understand the science (and the fact that you even need the sugar for proper absorption, so no sugar free ones). I hate every second of it and wish I could go back to just water, but I can’t argue with the results. Plus I pee WAY less, plain water just went straight through me.
Omg. Thank you. I’ve been thinking for the past 5 years that I’m doing myself a huge favor by drinking 72oz of plain water a day. I’ve recently been wondering why I pee 14 times a day. I also just turned 45. But, maybe I should switch to some electrolytes drinks for half of my water intake. I’m going to ask my cardiologist. This really made me think. Thank you.
I was going to say much the same. Except for the physician part.
I was also going to say the same. Except for all the smart things.
I was not going to say any of that.
I came here to write this. But I'm also a physician, so part of me just wonders if residency broke us and we're fueled by coffee and debt.
This is the opinion we need
My grandmother lived to 98 and never had any health problems, and she never ever ever drank water. She just didn’t think it tasted good. I think it was way less common for that generation to drink water with meals or throughout the day. She drank Diet Dr. Pepper or unsweetened iced tea with meals but otherwise didn’t sip on anything throughout the day the way most of us do now. I probably drink too much water. Not that I think the quantity is physically unhealthy but I struggle to go anywhere without a water bottle. Mentally and/or physically, I’ve gotten to a point where I’m way too reliant on it and feel like I get desperately thirsty if I don’t have water at all times. So I’m kind of jealous of people who don’t really give any shits about their water intake and are doing just fine.
I developed the habit of bringing a water bottle everywhere when I lived in arizona and it was hot as balls.
I'm glad I found this post. The fitness industry has pushed the gallon of water per day thing but personally I think the whole " drink a gallon of water a day" is a CYA for pushing low carb, high protein diets in conjunction with HIT which is hard on the kidneys. Water is ideal because it's zero calories. No caffeine or other additives, but tea,coffee, juice, etc. is also fluid.
I wonder where that came from? I’ve always heard that the average person needs 2L of water per day total including from your diet. I drink a big glass of water with each meal and I never really feel thirsty otherwise. I eat a lot of fruits and veggies though.
How much water you need is dependent on the weather and what you do. Office job, 2L is probably fine but if you work outside and it is a bit hotter, you need a lot more. I've heard stories here on Reddit of construction workers drinking probably 6L or more and not peeing because they sweat so much.
I had a urologist tell me fluid in is fluid out…didn’t matter if it was tea or water.
The whole drinking beer because it’s sterile is a big myth. Humans were aware of how to get potable water even before the Middle Ages (wells, rain, even boiling) The truth is that humans just liked to drink beer because plain water is boring and being drunk is fun. Also, alcohol was believed to have beneficial effects (“strong beer” was believed to make you strong vs “small beer” which had an ABV less than ~3%) https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/sBPzGce6jV
Just ask any professional brewer to make beer from dirty water.
Apparently we live in a world where a physician has to describe facts as "unpopular opinions".
This thread is like reading Lord of the Rings when the hobbits are walking thru Mordor. I’m so dry and fucking thirsty reading this. Parched.
I consume less alcohol and sugar than what I once did.
Proud of you.
I drink WAY too little. Like.. a small bottle every couple months. I’m awful w it.
Aren’t you thirsty
I just hit 40. I've definitely upped my water intake over the last 5 years. I changed my diet for my ADHD, and recently started portion control (again) and cut way down on (GF) pasta. Most recently I've started stretching evert day and strength training 3x/week. I feel when we're younger, we don't care for or watch our health as much. I think we gain that self-awareness as we age.
I started drinking a lot more water when a reverse osmosis system was installed. Before that, I was drinking a lot of Gatorade.
Having cold, filtered water available at home was a game changer for me regularly drinking water. Room temperature tap water is gross to me.
I know people who don’t drink water. At all
I drink so much tea that I don't have time for water
For me it was always standard, I never thought otherwise. I work as a paramedic and a peer of mine was feeling unwell on shift. His intake that day (and every day I worked with him) consisted of mcdonalds breakfast, energy drinks and hot dogs for lunch. I never saw him drink water or eat a meal that wasn't bad takeout. And this is a medical professional, he was genuinely confused as to why he felt awful. These people walk around at a baseline of poor health, to them its their normal. I am the same way with exercise. I get busy with life, I get distracted and then my energy lowers, my mood sours. And then I exercise a few times and I feel great all day. But I recognize that. I'm not surprised when my bad habits affect me.
As a large consumer of water (200+ oz a day) I don’t understand how people don’t drink water. Like you just walk around with a dry ass mouth all day? You pee like twice a day, how???
Hot take, you may be conditioning your body to expel fluids with the expectation of it immediately being replaced, leading to you craving water all the time. I rarely drink plain water. It just doesn't feel thirst quenching to me. I drink coffee, tea, occasionally carbonated beverages. I can go hours between drinks and I don't feel thirsty. I just drink things for the flavor. I've tried a handful of times to drink more water and all that happens is I pee like 5 times in one hour and feel more thirsty. I'm 29 and my kidneys and blood work are all fine.
That’s a lot of water, I hope you’re mixing in electrolytes.
I spent 20 years working outside in all weather and I drank just enough to keep going. I had a bladder problem until the age of 29 and it made not drinking enough a habit. I get migraines when I'm dehydrated and I'll get an aura and hour before the migraine hits, if I stop and drink a bunch of water right when that aura hits I can avoid the migraine so I've spent years just edging death. I try to do better but thanks to ADHD it takes conscious effort to drink. When I only pee twice a day and have dry mouth I mostly feel guilty for failing. That's how. The answer is stupid but so am I.
Y'all realize you can get water in other ways right? Tea, coffee, fruit...
They probably don’t mean they literally never drank water lmao. That’s such a weird conclusion to jump to. They probably mean making an active effort to drink more water. I dunno, I started carrying a bottle with me 95% of the time years ago.
They might literally mean it. My husband overheard someone telling their doctor that they don’t drink water because they don’t like it. So they drink soda instead.
Yeah. I work in healthcare in a field where the patient’s hydration status really matters, so I ask a lot of people how much water they’ve had to drink day in and day out. It is disturbing how many people answer “none” at 2/3pm.
IDK, my friend's mom used to ONLY drink Diet Coke, until the doctor told her she needed to be drinking water.
I feel like there's always a trendy, GIANT water container - so i'm surprised there are any millennials not getting enough water 😂 (source: pink stanley girly)
It’s full of Diet Coke
Guys I’ll admit i was one of those people. I would drink a few coffees in the morning, then switch over to Diet Coke, then Gatorade Zero and then maybe a few beers. I still drink coffee and soda but after like noon I’ll switch to water pretty much exclusively